Alistair Darling: Rather like the hon. Gentleman who speaks for the nationalists, the hon. Gentleman who speaks for the Conservatives is selective in the statistics that he quotes. I notice that he did not actually repudiate what his Front-Bench colleague said yesterday—that the Tories believe that Scotland is not a very attractive place for people to go and live in. What about the fact that we are home to one of the biggest banks in the world? The Royal Bank of Scotland is building brand new headquarters just outside Edinburgh, and we are home to numerous other financial institutions that are doing well, such as the Halifax Bank of Scotland. Even in manufacturing, where, yes, there have been difficulties because of the difficulties that face the electronics industry worldwide, there are successes to which we can point. The fact is that Scotland is now a very different place from the Scotland of the 1980s and 1990s, when there was record unemployment and a second generation of people were growing up with no work. The other thing that the hon. Gentleman should focus on is that the policies he advocates—£35 billion-worth of public spending cuts, with all the economic instability that would result—would take Scotland back to the past. No wonder the Conservatives are completely out of touch with modern Scotland. On present form, they are likely to remain that way for years to come.

Anne McGuire: No decisions about the relocation of Government Departments away from Whitehall have yet been made. They will be based on Departments' operational needs and individual business cases rather than the particular needs of specific areas, or geography. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made it clear to other Departments the advantages of Scotland as a location, and has encouraged them to consider Scotland when reviewing relocation plans.

David Lammy: What the Government are not doing is what the Opposition propose in the James review—scrapping community legal service partnerships and the money going to our citizens advice bureaux and law centres. We are not doing that, but we are sitting down with the professions in a fundamental legal aid review. We are sitting down with the Crown Prosecution Service and looking at processes in our criminal justice system to ensure that they are not driving up costs. As we are proud of on this side of the House of the advice that people get in our local communities, and particularly our civil legal aid, we are going to protect it.

Christopher Leslie: My hon. Friend is right that the law does not belong to lawyers. Occasionally, we need to bring together officials from the Crown Prosecution Service, the courts administration, including the judiciary, the police, the probation service and Prison Service to allow them to iron out the differences between their departments and work smoothly together as a team. I hope that those partnerships will mean better local engagement with neighbourhood organisations and tenants associations such as neighbourhood watch, and I know that local criminal justice boards intend to do that as soon as possible.

Christopher Leslie: Far fewer courthouses have closed in the past year than under previous Administrations. Given that there are so many courthouses, however, from time to time local magistrates committees recommend amalgamations or consolidations of buildings. From this April, the new unification of the courts administration will provide opportunities to set up new magistrates facilities, perhaps in towns that have a civil court only—there are swings and roundabouts. I will re-examine the programme in Somerset highlighted by the hon. Gentleman and form a view.

Norman Baker: What mechanism is in place to review the operation of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
	The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs (Mr. David Lammy): Comprehensive arrangements are in place across central Government to monitor the operation of the Act. The Department for Constitutional Affairs will receive quarterly returns from Departments on a range of information, including numbers of requests and the timeliness of responses. The first set of data will be published in June.

David Lammy: The fundamental legal aid review will report to Ministers in the first part of this year on reforms to place legal aid on a sustainable footing in the longer term and to better target resources to deliver the right outcomes for the right people. Ministers will then consider its recommendations.

David Lammy: The 1999 Act covered a number of areas of civil and criminal justice. Its main provisions established the community legal service and the criminal defence service, and extended conditional fee arrangements. The Department conducted an independent review from September 2003 on the operation of the CLS to assess the impact of the delivery of an efficient and effective service on those who most need it.

Julie Morgan: I agree that some progress has been made in recognising the child care needs of Members and staff in the House, especially through the expansion of the child care vouchers and the Westminster holiday pay scheme, which staff and Members use. However, does not the hon. Gentleman agree that it is high time we had a nursery here that serves both Houses and that would enable Members and staff to do their work more effectively? Will he reconsider the matter?

Archy Kirkwood: The hon. Lady has ploughed an assiduous furrow on the matter and I welcome her interest. My fellow Commissioners will always be alive to the need to make this place a more family friendly workplace. However, the evidence has not changed since the review was undertaken in 2002: the vast majority of people would like to provide care for their children at home rather than bring them to this place. It is right to bear the aspiration in mind—we want to set an example for other workplaces. The balance of advantage is currently in favour of extending the voucher scheme, but we will continue to keep the matter under review and if the next Parliament has a new intake of lady Members who are as assiduous as the hon. Lady, we might reconsider it early in that Parliament.

Archy Kirkwood: I understand that point perfectly, but it might interest the House to learn that up to 150 members of staff take advantage of the voucher scheme. That is a much bigger number of people. They are getting more modest benefits, but those benefits are appropriate to their needs. Some Member's staff in their constituencies are also taking advantage of the scheme, which is something that we shall want to promote in future. This is not simply an either/or; there will always be a tension between offering provision for the few and offering provision for the many, and we must keep the issue in mind while trying to develop the voucher scheme, which provides greater benefit for more people.

Phil Woolas: Following representations from my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) last July, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House asked the Procedure Committee whether it would look at the application of the sub judice resolution in respect of coroners' courts and advise on whether there should be some extension in the discretion allowed to the Chair. He welcomes the Committee's inquiry, and looks forward to its findings with interest.

Nicholas Winterton: Is the deputy Leader of the House aware that the Procedure Committee, which I chair, is currently undertaking an inquiry into the sub judice rule and into matters relating to coroners' courts? The Committee plans to make its report to the House before Easter. May I also say to the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) that there is still time for right hon. and hon. Members to submit evidence directly to me or to the Committee Clerk and, if necessary, to request to give oral evidence in person?

Paul Tyler: I welcome the current review, but is the Minister aware that much of this discussion took place in the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege back in 1999? Its report made a number of recommendations, including one that the two Houses of Parliament should bring the same rules into force, because there is an anomaly in regard to the way in which the sub judice rule is dealt with in each House. Does the Minister also recall the Committee's strong recommendation that
	"No action should be taken to limit freedom of speech in Parliament in respect of
	(a) matters subject to a court injunction imposing confidentiality; or
	(b) breaches of the Official Secrets Acts."
	Is he satisfied that the current review will be able to take those recommendations forward?

Phil Woolas: I am aware of that report by the Joint Committee. Indeed, when my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House referred the request from my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) to the Procedure Committee, along with a request from the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, that request was copied to the Procedure Committee in the House of Lords, because of the important questions that it raises. For the two Houses not to act in tandem would create further complications and, perhaps, further injustice.

Archy Kirkwood: I am aware, as is the Commission, of the need to try to engage greater interest among that age group in particular, and we are also aware of the valuable work of the United Kingdom Youth Parliament. The hon. Gentleman might not know that Committee Room 10 is already used very effectively by the education unit, and it is of a much more sensible scale for the number of youngsters often involved. I say to him in the spirit of compromise—although we have to be careful about the practicalities and precedents—that if the representatives of the United Kingdom Youth Parliament want to get in touch with the Commission and the education unit, I am sure that we will be able to promote their interests in a way that is beneficial to both parties.

Ms Debra Shipley, supported by Vera Baird, Alan Howarth, Geraint Davies, Mr. Andy Reed, Mr. Simon Thomas, Mr. Ernie Ross, Mr. Graham Allen, Mr. Paul Burstow, Mr. Paul Tyler, Angela Eagle and Mr. Robert Walter, presented a Bill to make provision regarding the marketing, promotion and sale of food and drink to and for children; to make provision for education and the dissemination of information about children's diet, nutrition and health; to place certain duties on the Food Standards Agency; and for connected purposes [Bill 56].

Brian Cotter: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require local authorities to develop plans to support small shops; to amend the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to impose additional planning requirements in relation to large shops and shopping centres; to make provision about retail purchasing by local authorities and other public authorities; to amend the Local Government Finance Act 1988 in relation to non domestic rates for small shops and related business; and for connected purposes [Bill 57].
	Small shops are at the very heart of our local communities, providing vital services to local residents and a wide choice of goods and services. A study produced by the Council for the Protection of Rural England in 1997 highlighted some of the most important functions provided by small shops, which can apply equally to small retailers in urban and rural environments.
	The survey showed that small shops provide a lifeline for those in need, such as the elderly, the young and those without transport, and provide valuable opportunities for human contact. For some people on their own, particularly the elderly, the only conversation they may have all day is with the shop assistant in their local store, so the friendly and intimate experience of shopping in a small outlet is one that they particularly value. Just last week, I met a lady who sees that as a particularly important and satisfying part of her job, as do many such people.
	Small retailers provide a market for local produce and suppliers, thus providing consumers with more choice and recycling money back into the local community, and they also provide important job opportunities in such communities. A report published by the Department of Health at the end of 1999 as part of the Government's neighbourhood renewal strategy summarises the important role that small shops play in poorer or isolated locations:
	"Thriving local shops can provide employment for local residents and a pathway into new schools and training opportunities, can reduce crime and can improve health by providing a range of quality goods including food, at affordable prices."
	The important role that small shops play in our local communities is therefore clear, so it is worrying that recent years have seen a rise in the number of small retailers shutting up shop for good.
	In a 2002 report, "Ghost Town Britain: Death on the High Street", the New Economics Foundation revealed that between 1997 and 2002, specialist stores such as butchers, bakers and fishmongers shut at the rate of 50 per week. Assuming closures have continued at that rate, I would maintain that more than 20,000 specialist shops have closed since Labour came to power.
	An increase in the number of local bank branches and post offices closing has also accelerated the decline of local shopping parades as consumers look elsewhere to access the financial and shopping facilities that they need, often in out-of-town shopping centres. In August, the New Economics Foundation launched its "Clone Town Britain" survey amid fears that Britain was becoming a nation of clone towns, suggesting that "identikit urban environments" and chain stores are squeezing out local identity and individuality.
	To some extent, those changes reflect developments in lifestyles and consumer tastes. Many of us, including me, appreciate the convenience of shopping at a supermarket or shopping centre and of meeting all our needs under one roof. Supermarkets in particular can provide shoppers with access to cheap food and goods, and competition between the major players is therefore of benefit to the consumer in helping to keep prices down. Currently, however, there are concerns about the consolidation of the grocery market by the larger supermarkets and about the operation of the supermarket code of practice, particularly in relation to the treatment of suppliers. That has led the Association of Convenience Stores, Friends of the Earth and others to call for a full market review by the Office of Fair Trading.
	Research conducted on just over 1,000 consumers for the Association of Convenience Stores in October 2004 showed that 63 per cent. thought that the growth of supermarket-owned convenience stores gave consumers less choice about where to shop. Therefore, it seems that while people want the convenience and cheap goods that supermarkets provide, they also want the diversity and friendly service that small, local retailers provide. That is why we must act to prevent a further decline in the sector.
	My Bill seeks to address that by requiring local authorities to develop retail plans for their area, as proposed by the New Economics Foundation, building on proposals outlined under the Local Communities Sustainability Bill. That was highlighted in a report on small shops published by the Better Regulation Task Force in July 2001, which said that
	"small retailers continue to have concerns that planning decisions that allow out of town stores to be built do not fully cost and assess the impact on local retailers and employment in the surrounding area."
	Recently, in my constituency, I was approached by small retailers in one parade of shops who were extremely concerned about a planning application that had been submitted to site a supermarket express store in the area. Although those plans were subsequently rejected, it is imperative to ensure that local authorities take sufficient account of concerns raised by small retailers and consumers in reaching their decisions. Without the Bill, that cannot always happen. It is therefore imperative that we encourage local authorities to take a sustainable approach to economic planning and require them to consider both small retailers and consumers in their plans, including the need to ensure social inclusion and diversity in the retail sector. Such plans could be implemented in several ways, but it would ultimately be up to each local area to decide what worked best for them.
	My Bill would also call for local competition policy, again as proposed by the New Economics Foundation. Normally, competition policy is addressed nationally, but it would be applied locally under my Bill. The national predominance of a chain is meaningless in deciding whether a supermarket will drive local shops out of business. Such an application of the law would also empower local communities to make decisions about the future of their areas.
	Under the proposals, local communities would also have the final word in any decision on whether to allow the construction of a large shopping centre exceeding a certain size. My Bill would also implement the recommendation made by the New Economics Foundation to require local authorities to use tools such as those developed by the foundation to track local spending and then favour local retailers whose businesses ultimately leave more money re-circulating in the local economy, especially in poor areas.
	Finally, my Bill would also provide rate relief for shops and businesses with a rateable value of less than £25,000. The proposal would be revenue-neutral, with larger businesses required to cover the cost in accordance with an upward scale. Research published by the Department of the Environment in 1995 showed that business rates represented 30 per cent. of the profits on businesses with turnovers of less than £100,000—more than twice the proportion for large businesses. The Government have acknowledged that that is a problem for retailers, and stated in their response to the Better Regulation Task Force report on small shops that
	"small high street shops are sometimes valued at a higher rate per square metre than supermarkets."
	While the Government themselves have recognised the problem, their proposed rate relief scheme, which would provide relief for small firms with a rateable value of less than £10,000, will not do a great deal to address the problem. The Federation of Small Businesses has argued that the threshold is too low. Following the recent revaluation of commercial properties, it warns that many small shopkeepers may experience a considerable increase in their rates. It goes on to say that a shop in the south of England faces an average 29 per cent. increase in its rateable value, which could mean an increase of about £1,800 in the final rates bill.
	My Bill seeks to address the effect of the recent revaluation and the disproportionate burden that business rates place on small shops by increasing the threshold at which rate relief is available for smaller retailers. The measures that I have proposed are essential if we are to ensure that there is no further erosion of Britain's independent retail sector, and I therefore commend the Bill to the House.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Brian Cotter, Malcolm Bruce, Mrs. Annette Brooke, Sue Doughty, Andrew George, Mr. Parmjit Singh Gill, Mr. Mike Hancock, Mr. David Heath, Dr. John Pugh and Sarah Teather.

Norman Baker: I beg to move,
	That this House endorses the comments of Sir David King that climate change is the most serious threat facing the planet and congratulates him on his work in this area; welcomes the Prime Minister's commitment to make the tackling of climate change a top priority for the United Kingdom's presidencies of the EU and G8 this year; reiterates the UK commitment to a 60 per cent. reduction in carbon emissions by 2050; strongly welcomes the coming into force of the Kyoto agreement on 16th February and the strong role the European Union has played in achieving this; believes that it is vital that, post Kyoto, the international community works to reach agreement on the action needed to tackle climate change, which should engage the United States but which should also recognise the importance of the energy choices which face many of the major developing countries; calls on the global community to work with them in addressing those choices; rejects the notion that tackling climate change will of necessity damage the economy and indeed suggests that it is failure to do so that will lead to that result; believes that all parties in this House should by their own actions help convince the public of the need to take environmental matters seriously; and therefore condemns Conservative plans severely to weaken the Environment Agency through the massive and debilitating cuts proposed for the Agency by that party, and its damaging plans to abolish the climate change levy.
	It is a great pleasure to introduce a debate on the important subject of climate change just a few days before the Kyoto protocol comes into force on 16 February. It has been a long, hard struggle, and it is right to pay tribute to people from all parties and all countries who have made Kyoto possible, despite the opposition of the United States, Australia and others. It is nearly the anniversary of a debate that the Liberal Democrats introduced in the limited time that we are allowed for Opposition debates. On 10 February 2004, we held a debate on the state of the environment and, as environment spokesman, I said that the environment was not receiving sufficient attention in the House, and that there should be annual debate on it. We have waited without success for the Government to introduce a debate in the intervening 12 months, so, almost to the day, we are pleased to introduce another. The Liberal Democrats have a limited number of Opposition days, so it would be very welcome if the Government provided time for such debates.
	During this Parliament, we have introduced three substantive debates on the environment in Opposition time. By comparison, there has been only one debate in Government time and the Conservatives have not introduced any at all. They were going to introduce a debate on climate change last year but, at the last moment, it disappeared and was replaced by a debate in which they opposed wind farms. That must be the only example in history where the horse has been pulled up before the runners are off.

Norman Baker: I acknowledge that the science is not exact and that there are different projections for the future in respect of the exact level of temperature change. That is bound to be the case, but it is unquestionable that climate change is occurring and that temperatures are increasing. If the Gulf stream switches off, that could well lead to downward changes in temperature for this country, but that does not show that climate change is failing to occur—it is occurring.

Simon Hughes: My hon. Friend has praised some elements of the press, and some of them do a very good job, but does he accept that the national media should also report what happens at a local and regional level? For example, one Sunday newspaper carried a very good story about the potential effect of climate change on a very old pub's daub and wattle structure. People realise that climate change affects far-away countries with which we have links, but they will be more likely to accept that they must change their lives and lifestyles if they understand that places in this country can suffer as well.

Norman Baker: I absolutely agree. The hon. Gentleman is Chair of the Select Committee on Environmental Audit, and does a splendid job. Moreover, I watched him grill the Prime Minister very effectively this morning in the Select Committee on Liaison.
	All Governments—our own can do this through the Department for International Development and other Departments—need to look at how international development aid is spent. We need to know that the money we give in aid, for good reasons, is not making an environmental problem worse. In the end, developing countries need a secure environment even more than the UK does. It is an own goal to encourage fossil-fuel energy generation, as happens in some places.
	It seems very likely that there will be an increase in global temperature of 2°C by the 2050s. The consequence for the developing world will be that an additional 250 million to 300 million people will be at risk of contracting malaria. Also, 12 million more people will be exposed to hunger as crop production falls, and 20 million more could suffer from coastal flooding. Clearly, that must be tackled. I suggest to Mr. Lomborg that merely giving aid and doing nothing else is like pouring water into a colander: it will not solve the problem.
	Does tackling climate change have a negative economic impact? The Secretary of State will know that one reason given by the US for not engaging in the Kyoto process was the alleged damage to the US economy. Frankly, I think that that damage is somewhat overstated. To be fair to the Government, and their Tory predecessors, this country over the past 15 years has demonstrated an ability to disconnect economic growth from carbon emissions. That is a very important lesson to take out and sell to the Americans and to others who are sceptical about the proposition.

Norman Baker: I agree, and I shall come to that later, if time allows.
	One of the first things we must do is to end the predict and provide policy on airport growth, which the Government seem to have accepted. Secondly, fiscal measures must be introduced to put pressure on airlines for greater efficiency in minimising carbon emissions, which will soar if we do not take action soon.

Lembit �pik: On economic cost, is my hon. Friend aware that a Friends of the Earth report in 1997 predicted that, by 2030, the period between storm surges of the magnitude previously expected once every 100 years will be reduced to one in 12 years in Holyhead, one in five years in Cardiff and one in three and a half years in Milford Haven? The resulting damage will give rise to untold economic costs, and investment now is likely to pay for itself many times over in preventing damage in the first world, let alone the third.

Norman Baker: That is right, and there are two equations. The first is the cost of doing nothing. Those who say, Let's not take action because it would damage the economy, fail to cost in the effects of doing nothing, which are significant. Flood defence work is required in this country, but that is not the only example. Doing nothing will have huge economic costs. Parliamentary answers I have received have suggested that the total cost of damage to the environment in 2004 was 67 billion. Not all of that arose from climate change, but much of it did. That is the cost of doing nothing.

John Gummer: Does that not lead the hon. Gentleman to be displeased with the Government for going back to the European Union and reneging on their original proposal? They pretended that that had something to do with bureaucracy in the European Union, but the reason was that the CBI was leaning on the Prime Minister and Prime Minister gave way, as he always does on this matter.

Norman Baker: One of the joys of making speeches on the environment in the presence of hon. Members who are well aware of the facts is that they anticipate my points, although that is sometimes unhelpful to the continuity of my speech.
	I agree that the position on the national allocation plan is unfortunate. The Government have reneged on the original targets and pulled back from them. That sent exactly the wrong message to countries in the EU that have not yet signed up. It is unhelpful if we send out conflicting messages saying that it is a good scheme but that we shall partly renege on it. The Government say that they have more information, which caused them to change their view. How convenient. That might be true, but does not seem convincing on paper.
	I understood that the outcome of the dispute between the European Union and the Government was going to be cleared up this week. However, The Daily Telegraph, which I always read because it is a most reliable newspaperI am sure that hon. Members agree, tongue in cheeksaid today that the European Commission has forced Ministers to delay an announcement yet again until the matter is sorted out. When the Secretary of State or the Minister replies, perhaps they will clarify where we are with a national allocation plan, whether agreement has been reached and, if so, on what basis. If we have reduced our targetthe reason would probably be pressure from uneducated elements of businessit would be unfortunate and unhelpful to the international efforts of the Prime Minister to convince others to treat climate change seriously.
	On the international situation, first, I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister and the Government have made climate change one of the two priorities for our EU and G8 presidencies. That is absolutely right and if we were in government, we would probably have picked the same two priorities. We are pleased that that is the Prime Minister's approach and it is clear that he is giving time to it and that a lot of work is going on behind the scenes with the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and others in difficult negotiating territory. We support them in their negotiations and I hope that we can provide constructive support, as well as constructive criticism in an attempt to be helpful.
	The United States Administration are the predominant problem, but we also need to accept the situation in developing countries, such as China, India and Brazil, whose economies are fast-growing. China has an immensely fast-running economy; it is almost unbelievable how fast it is growing. The result will be an increase in energy consumption, and we have a key role to play in their choice of whether they will base their energy needs on renewable resources, fossil fuel, or nuclear options. If those developing countries ask why they should sort out the mess created by the western world and suffer the brunt of the problem, as they might, we must have a good answer. We must make it clear that we got it wrong in many ways, but that we now have collective responsibility throughout the world to try to sort it out. If we do not sort it out, they will suffer even more than we will.

Richard Ottaway: The hon. Gentleman referred to developing countries, the central feature of which is population growth. The world's population is increasing by around 250,000 a day and the main growth is in India and China, but they are not using modern, renewable technologies. Does he acknowledge that population growth is a key factor in climate change?

Norman Baker: All human activity is key in climate change, and population growth is one factor. It is important that as far as possible our international development and other policies encourage sustainable living. Population growth is best tackled by providing security and a decent standard of living in developing countries. That will take pressure off population growth, as we have seen in Europe where it is much lower than in Africa. The way forward is to take an enlightened approach to those countries.
	I want to touch briefly on the tactics adopted by the Government towards their partners in the EU and the G8. In December, my colleague the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), the Lib Dem shadow Foreign Secretary, and I wrote to the Foreign Secretary about the tactics to be deployed in negotiations with the United States. I appreciate that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will not want to lay bare those tactics before the House, but it is important to understand that there are two possible ways to proceed. The first is to assume that the United States genuinely does not believe the science and to spend much time and effort to persuade the US that the science is there. The alternative is to assume that the US knows the science but pretends not towhich is where I think we areand that it is stalling for time in an effort not to bring in measures that are inevitable. I am frightened that the British Government are spending too much time taking the American position at face value and thus neglecting the opportunity to make more progress. Kyoto will come in next week, in the teeth of US opposition, so it is important that those who have signed up to Kyoto take this opportunity to go forward together. If we go forward together strongly, the US will follow at some point. Furthermore, without causing diplomatic incidents, we should work with individual US statesin the north-east, California and elsewherewhich are actually doing good stuff.

Norman Baker: Indeed. Those states and countries are moving forward on emissions trading and tackling climate change. American business, too, increasingly recognises the opportunities in the world from tackling climate change. That is what is happening grassroots-up in the US, but it has not yet reached the White House.
	We need to encourage those elements. What we must not do, in any circumstances, is to try to find a halfway house that brings the Americans on board but would involve abandoning key targets to get them to sign a piece of paper that the Prime Minister can wave Chamberlain-style saying, Climate change agreement in our time. We must avoid that at all costs.
	I am worried. Although I believe that the Prime Minister is well intentioned, I am not convinced that he has the diplomatic skills to get the right result in his negotiations with President Bush. A whole range of issues, whether the International Criminal Court, Iraq or even the Chancellor's laudable attempts to secure debt relief, is being stopped, stymied, blocked or opposed by the United States. It is difficult to think of anything that the US has done recently that is helpful to the UK. Our special relationship with the United States is peculiar; it is all give on one side and all take on the other. That seems a peculiar arrangement. I wonder whether it is seriously worth pursuing the idea that we can secure any agreement from the Americans. That is not to say that we should not talk to them. We can agree on matters such as technology and investment in technology and we can agree to share science and so on, but we must not in any circumstances allow the US to be a brake on the post-Kyoto arrangements. We must ensure that those arrangements are put in place with the countries that are willing to agree to them. We must also ensure that they include targets.
	The Secretary of State will be aware of a report in The Observer that suggested that in the December Council the British Government made an attempt to abandon the 2050 target for a 60 per cent. reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. We were told subsequently that that was a tactic by the British Government and that in March the policy would come back in.

Margaret Beckett: I do not want to detain the House, but that was not a tactic by the Government; it was a mistake by The Observer.

Norman Baker: That is a good point, which demonstrates how impossible it is to cover the whole range of issues in a speech such as this, especially as I do not want to take any more time from the other Members who want to speak.
	The Government must make more progress on transport where there has been a big increase in emissions, which is out of control. Road traffic will grow by about 25 per cent. over this decade alone. Public transport fares are rocketing. The cost of travelling by rail has gone up by 84 per cent. since 1974 and is about to increase again; the cost of travelling by bus has grown by 71 per cent., while the cost of motoring has gone down. We have the aviation problems to which the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas) rightly referred earlier and they, too, need to be tackled. Stephen Tindale of Greenpeace has said that the Government have failed and that they seem to have given up on controlling emissions from transport. That is a big problem and the Government must sort it out. They must also ensure that their energy White Paper, which contains many good ideas, is brought to fruition.
	The motion sets out the absolute importance of the need to take urgent action on the serious threat facing the planet from climate change. It recognises the need to engage the US and developing countries, and calls on the Government to ensure that that is a key priority. I hope very much that the House will support the motion.

Margaret Beckett: I find myself in a rather unusual position for a Minister taking part in an Opposition day debate. Although, inevitably, I do not agree with everything that the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) has just said, I am in agreement with the sentiments expressed in the motion. As the opening words of the motion draw attention to the overwhelming importance and gravity of the threat of climate change, it is welcome and not altogether surprising that there should be common ground and agreement on both sides of the House, or at least in most parts of the House.
	Climate change is a global problem, probably, as the motion says, the most urgent challenge facing the global community. It requires not only political leadership but ultimately a global solution. The Prime Minister, as is acknowledged across the world, is doing his utmost to provide that leadership and is leading international efforts to tackle climate change. It was his decision to make climate change a top priority for both our G8 and our EU presidencies. I welcome the recognition of that fact in the Liberal Democrat motion.
	I begin by reiterating, as did the hon. Member for Lewes in his opening speech, the sheer breadth of consensus on the science of climate changea degree of consensus, which, as he said, is not always reflected in the way that scientific discussion is reported. Over about 18 years, the intergovernmental panel on climate change has brought together more than 1,000 international scientific experts on climate change.
	The IPCC's third assessment report in 2001 concluded that there was strong evidence that climate change owing to human emissions of greenhouse gases was already occurring and that future emissions of greenhouse gases were likely to raise global temperatures by between 1.4 and 5.8 C during this century. I am always conscious of the fact that that does not sound very much, but I am equally conscious of the fact that the scientific evidence suggests that such a rise in temperature would have a wide range of impacts both on the natural world and, in consequence, on human society.
	Nevertheless, some are still questioning whether we should worry about climate change. The most vociferous challenges that we hear nearly all come from self-proclaimed experts with little real expertise, whose arguments nevertheless receive attention that is out of all proportion to either their numbers or their relevance. That is not unprecedented, of course. The hon. Member for Lewes gave the example of those who query the link between lung cancer and smoking, and there are still more who still query the link between HIV and AIDS. So that phenomenon is not uncommon, but it is dangerous.
	I will not reiterate the examples that the hon. Gentleman gave, but I will make an observation about one of those whom he quoted. As he rightly says, Professor Lomborg talks instead about diverting resources that could be used to help to tackle the problems of climate change to tackle those of development. Indeed, we all accept that development needs to be addressed, but the real danger of his argument is that if we follow the route that he prescribesthe hon. Gentleman used the example of pouring water into a colanderwe would certainly be in danger of running to stand still because of trying to tackle impacts that we were not seeking to mitigate. Such people must not be allowed to divert us from the real question, which is not whether climate change is happening, but what we could and should do about it.

Simon Hughes: May I add a further consensual proposition? We have a very unusual circumstance of an Opposition motion on the Order Paper without an amendment from the Government or the Conservative party. There is consensus among the main parties, and broad consensus among those outside who know what they are talking about. Will the right hon. Lady join usI know that she tries to do this all the timein persuading the media to place more importance on the huge international issues on which there is agreement than on ridiculous attempts to divide us on matters of zero importance to people abroad, let along people at home?

Margaret Beckett: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Of course, I understand the anxiety expressed by the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell). No one is talking about stifling debate, but there is no harm in giving a proper weighting and relevance to the different contributions to that debate, and I share the view expressed by the hon. Gentleman and his colleague, the hon. Member for Lewes, that, unfortunately, that still does not seem to be happening in many parts of the media, which give entirely disproportionate space, time and coverage to those whose views are neither widely shared nor widely respected.
	The international community has taken an unprecedented and significant step. It is particularly significant in this context because it is clear that the whole international community has accepted the science of climate change and thereby agreed to the Kyoto protocol, whose entry into force we will celebrate next Wednesday. But the Kyoto protocol is just a first tiny step towards tackling climate change. There is little doubt that the uncertainty of the past year or so about when andindeed, at some stageswhether it would come into force had led to a loss of momentum in international discussions on climate change, and we urgently need to renew that momentum. That is why the Prime Minister put climate change, with Africa, at the top of the international political agenda this year.

Margaret Beckett: I have not made formal representations because I must admit to my hon. Friend that, over my years in politics, I have not found that formal protests to the news media about such issues are very productive. However, I am awareI think that this is widely knownthat, for example, a thoughtful, well-constructed letter making exactly that point but not challenging people's right to be heard has been sent to such organisations from national representatives of four of the most well-known non-governmental organisations. I thought for a day or so that that plea had been heard, but in more recent days, there is some evidence that it has been set aside yet again, but I share my hon. Friend's view that it would be advantageous to us all if we could move on from what is a very sterile dispute into the much more difficult territory of what we do and how we do it most effectively.

Margaret Beckett: I agree with my hon. Friend that, indeed, such claims can have a damaging effect, and some of its manifestations are more bizarre than others. I was faintly surprised to hear that someone is now suggesting that there is no evidence of sea level rise. I should have thought that that was one of the most easy things to observein fact, it is taking place.
	Our presidencies of the G8 and the EU give us the opportunity this year to refocus political attention both on the scale of the challenge and, indeed, on how we can meet it. As the Prime Minister said at the Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum, we need to send a clear signal of our common direction of travel to show that we are united as a world community in moving in the direction of greenhouse gas reductions, thus making that a signal that business and the global economy will understand and can follow. We need to underpin that with a firm push for research and technology and for the implementation of technological developments. We need to reach out to the developing world, both to those rapidly industrialising economies whose growing energy needs must be met sustainably and to the least developed countries whoagain, as the hon. Member for Lewes saidstand to lose most from the effects of climate change.

Margaret Beckett: I take the hon. Gentleman's point, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary would do so, too. I simply say that what the Foreign Office was seeking to do in that paper was to highlight the things that perhaps people do not know are very much already on the agenda, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that we have the utmost help and co-operation from the Foreign Office, from the Foreign Secretary and, not least, from the many more junior members of the Foreign Office who are in place in our posts in all the various countries with which we need to work and who provide an excellent and very co-operative service, working with my Department, to spread some of these messages. I understand the anxiety that the hon. Gentleman highlights, but I assure him that the Foreign Office is very much onside.
	To map our direction of travel, we need to be guided by the best scientific evidence on the potential impact of climate change. That is why at the start of our G8 year, at the Met Office in Exeter last week, we convened a meeting of the top international scientists working on climate change. Those at the meeting concluded that, compared with the IPCC's last assessment in 2001, there is now greater clarity and less uncertainty about the impact of climate change across a wide range of systems, sectors and societies. In many cases, those at the meeting suggested the risks are more serious than previously thought.
	Those at the conference noted that there is evidence that the sensitivity of the climate system to greenhouse gas emissions is now likely to be higher than was believed even in 2001 and that that implies a greater likelihood both of temperature increase and of damaging impacts at lower levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Those at the conference also noted that delaying taking action is likely to require greater action later to achieve the same temperature target and suggested that even a delay of only five years could be significant.
	As I read those words, I was reminded of a remark that an American business man made to me in Davosit used sailing as a metaphor, so perhaps it is appropriate today. He said that if it is thought necessary to change course, the earlier one does so, the smaller the course correction can be. The later one leaves it, the greater the course correction, and if one leaves it too late, sometimes sufficient correction cannot be made. That is an apposite and useful example.

Tam Dalyell: Before my right hon. Friend leaves the subject of the Exeter meeting, she will know, because the Minister for the Environment and Agri-environment wound up the meeting, that last Tuesday Professor Mitchell of the Met Office in Exeter, along with Sir David King, emphasised the difficulties that arise when rain falls instead of slow-melting snow because it comes down much more quickly and there is thus less time for absorption. May I take it that that subject is a top research priority?

Margaret Beckett: We are indeed examining that matter. I am mindful of the remarks from the end of the conference, and we are all conscious, whether due to snow melt or other events such as those in Boscastle recently, of the way in which changes to the pattern of water flows can make a significant difference to previously expected circumstances.
	The report of the science conference uses measured and careful words, but it gives a clear message to politicians. It underlines the urgency of action, and we must ensure that that message is widely heard in the G8, in the EU, at the UN and in our constituencieswherever climate change is discussed. However, we will not achieve progress simply by reiterating the scale of the threat. We also need to demonstrate that the global community can meet the challenge successfully. As the Prime Minister said in Davos, if we put forward as a solution to climate change something that involves drastic cuts in growth or standards of living, it simply will not be accepted, not least by the poorest countries and societies for which survival itself requires development.
	Fortunately, that need not be the case. The UK set out two years ago in the energy White Paper our commitment to cutting our emissions by 60 per cent. by about 2050. We believe that the target is achievable without sacrificing our economy, as our economic analysis suggests. Indeed, the impact of unchecked climate change would be far more damaging to our economy. We therefore hope that others will consider not only following that analysis, but setting similar long-term goals.
	Perhaps because we have all been focussed on the scale of the challenge, the international community has hitherto spent too little time discussing and co-operating on the strategic challenges of moving to a low-carbon economy. That is why next month, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and I will host a round-table discussion for energy and environment Ministers from 20 countries that will focus on such issues. It will be a unique forum to bring together countries with significant and growing energy needs and cut across the usual divides between both developed and developing economies and ministerial portfolios. The round-table discussion will examine the challenges of stimulating research, technology and investment to tackle climate change, and will try to identify some of the ways forward.
	All countries need to be engaged in the effort to tackle climate change, including the world's largest economy and biggest greenhouse gas emitter, the United States. There is evidence, although I do not suggest that it has been evident in the Chamber today, that some may want to use this issue to engage in grand political gestures and to isolate the US for its regrettable refusal to ratify the Kyoto protocol. There is evidence that some people hope that the US will somehow, through isolation, be drawn back into international dialogue or agreement. That is not a credible strategy. We have already seen from the Kyoto protocol the problems that can be stored up if we do not build the underlying political acceptance needed to deliver our objectives: acceptance is required for the exercise of political will. The Government will thus continue, bilaterally and with our EU partners, to engage the United States intensively in climate change discussions at all levels. We will, of course, do that through the G8, but not exclusively so.

James Paice: I want the Secretary of State to go back over the accusation that she made against the Opposition about the European emissions trading policy. On what basis does she suggest that we have opposed the European emission trading scheme?

Margaret Beckett: I am afraid that I am not carrying any Hansard references with me[Interruption.]but that is certainly the impression that we have been given. If that is not the Conservative party's policy, I am delighted to hear it. Would the hon. Gentleman like to tell me from the Dispatch Box that the Conservatives do not propose to abolish the climate change levy? Perhaps he would like to confirm that, as we understand from the last time that the Opposition were asked about the issue, the Conservative party does not feel able yet to support our 60 per cent. target on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. I see that that, too, seems still to be Conservative policyor rather lack of policy.

Margaret Beckett: My hon. Friend is entirely right in drawing attention both to the value of much of the work of the Environment Agency and to Government funding and the dangers of the James review proposals. The Conservatives propose to take 47 million from the Environment Agency through 1,286 job cuts among those whom they dismiss as operational staff. They are the very people who clean up after disasters, whether in the circumstances that my hon. Friend has identified or those involving the Sea Empress, which caused a massive oil spill off the Welsh coast in 1996.
	The Conservatives also gloss over the role of those whom they intend to sack in enforcing the rules on, for example, fly-tippingabandoned cars, beds and other rubbishwhich blights so many landscapes and brings great misery to many ordinary families and communities. Again, that is consistent at least with the voting pattern that the Tory Opposition have displayed. That is why they opposed the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Bill on Second Reading on 10 January, when they said that such matters were urban issues and not rural concerns. This Government disagree, and think that our proposals will improve the local environment for all in urban and rural areas.
	Let us consider the Tory approach to climate change. Claiming to recognise the dangers while rejecting potential solutions is not merely backward looking but typically short sighted. The motion correctly stresses that it is possible to grow our economy and cut greenhouse gas emissions. Between 1990 and 2003, our gross domestic product went up by 32 per cent., while our greenhouse gas emissions went down by about 14 per cent.

Margaret Beckett: Obviously, I cannot give an assurance that every programme will be supported in quite the same way, but we looked very carefully at the programmes that were supported under previous schemes to try to achieve the maximum value for money, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman would be the first to seek and to applaud. Although I entirely share his view that it is through education that many of the problems can be tackled, I have little doubt that the Department for Education and Skills is as committed to that as my Department. The previous Secretary of State certainly took the issue very seriously and I have no cause whatever to doubt that his successor takes it any less seriously.
	I have talked about the way in which these issues are handled and how we seek to make 2005 a year of international leadership. We will use our EU presidency to encourage EU colleagues to meet their Kyoto targets; to set out a medium and long-term strategy for the EU beyond Kyoto, working towards the guideline of limiting global temperature increase to no more than 2o C, which is an existing EU guideline; and above all to engage the EU in a debate about further action with the wider international community.
	I do not want to be diverted, but perhaps this is the point at which to say to the hon. Member for Lewes, who raised the story in The Observer, that there has been a genuine misunderstanding. We all understand that it is always a problem when a journalist gets hold of a document that they believe to be exclusive, as they often become rather more excited than the content justifies. The European Commission is undertaking on behalf of the whole Community exactly the analysis of the scientific and economic impact of measures that might be taken that we undertook before we drew up our energy White Paper and agreed to our 60 per cent. target. We anticipate the publication of that analysis this month. It will be considered in the March Council, which will discuss its implications for any medium and long-term targets or goals that the EU might set. The Environment Council was unanimous in resisting attempts to get member states to commit themselves to a number the month before the analysis was published, rather than wait until the month after. That never struck us as a good way to make policy, but I concede that there have been misunderstandings.
	In the past few months, there have been some encouraging signals in the international dialogue. It was inevitably becalmed while people wondered whether the Kyoto protocol would come into force, or whether we needed to build on the consensus behind it by some alternative means, but Russia's welcome decision to ratify has been accompanied by two other recent developments. First, everyone has begun to focus more on how we can adapt to the climate changes already built in by human activity in the past century: focusing on adaptation, especially on supporting and assisting the most vulnerable, heightens awareness of the need to find ways to avert even greater dangers and to mitigate our impact on the environment. Secondly, recognition has grown of the fact that, especially in economies such as ours, with increased challenges come increased opportunities. The most obvious are the opportunities to save money while saving carbonopportunities highlighted by the Carbon Trust and the Energy Saving Trustbut, while welcome, they are a small part of the potential economic benefits of tackling climate change. New jobseven new industriesare growing up around us: four years ago, 170,000 people were employed in environmental industries, which had a turnover of some 16 billion; today, there are 400,000 such jobs and turnover has reached 25 billion.
	Despite those real opportunities, which we must seize, as the world's top scientists recently reconfirmed, climate change remains a serious threat to our worldnot in some far distant future, but in our own and our children's and grandchildren's lifetimes. It is a problem crying out for leadership. The Prime Minister has committed the Government to providing that leadership and I hope that the House will agree to support us in doing so by giving its support to the motion.

Tim Yeo: The Secretary of State rehearses the tired old argument that the cut in carbon dioxide emissions before 1997 was something to do with the performance of the economy. Let me remind her that we have recently been hearing boasts from the Government about 50 consecutive quarters of economic growth. Almost half those quarters occurred before 1997, under the Conservative Government. The reduction in carbon dioxide emissions under the Conservatives was achieved in a period covering five years of continuous economic growth. The last five years of that period were of continuous economic growth, but despite that, that Government's policies achieved a cut in carbon dioxide emissions that this Government have failed to achieve. They have failed to continue the progress. She misleadingly referred to greenhouse gases in the hope that people will think that they are carbon dioxide. I am glad to say that on the very day when she made her broadcast, 2 February, a week ago tomorrow, a Friends of the Earth press release made it clear within hours that
	Carbon dioxide levels have not fallen since Labour came to power . . . UK emissions of carbon dioxide stand at only 7.5 per cent below the 1990 baselinethe same as when Labour came to power in 1997.
	Perhaps the rises in carbon dioxide emissions that have occurred under Labour explain the attempts reportedly made in secret last year by Britain to water down the longer-term EU targets. Whether or not those reports are trueI have heard the exchanges between the hon. Member for Lewes and the Secretary of Statethey certainly give rise to very justifiable concern. In any event, the Government have been forced to admitat least, this is clear to everyone elsethat they will be unable to achieve their own target for carbon dioxide emissions, which is a cut of 20 per cent. on 1990 levels by 2010, as set out in the 1997 Labour election manifesto. That target cannot now possibly be met.
	That failure scarcely enables Britain to lecture other countries about the need for more progress. Britain's failure to have a national allocations plan ready and agreed in time for the start of trading in the EU emissions trading scheme further weakens the Government's international authority. Despite its flaws, the EU emissions trading scheme is, at least for the time being, the only game in town. It is the best mechanism available for encouraging the efficient use of resources in tackling climate change and cutting carbon dioxide emissions.
	Last summer, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs had a national allocations plan ready for submission to the EU, but the plan was apparently ripped up on the intervention of the Prime Minister himself. The result is that, today, British companies are unable to take part in emissions trading.

Tim Yeo: I pay warm tribute to my hon. Friend's chairmanship of the Environmental Audit Committee, which has produced many constructive and thoughtful reports on the subjects that we are debating today. He is right that no inherent conflict exists between economic growth, business opportunities and commercial prosperity, and the measures that are needed to tackle climate changeindeed, the two go hand in hand.
	Fiscal instruments have an important role to play. I am determined that the next Conservative Government will make greater use of fiscal instruments than the present Government. Unexploited opportunities exist to use our tax system to encourage people to make greener choices.
	The starting date for emissions trading, 1 January 2005, was not a great surprise. It is difficult to reconcile the Government's failure to be ready for that date with their claim that they are putting climate change at the heart of the British EU presidency. I wonder how much satisfaction the Minister takes in seeing Britain among the laggards in that process.
	Although participation in the scheme, when it eventually happens, will be helpful, it is not the whole answer to getting Britain's CO 2 emissions back on a firmly downward trend, which will require policy changes in four areas. First, energy efficiency may be unglamorous, but as a former Conservative Secretary of State for Energy put it, it is
	the cheapest, swiftest and most publicly acceptable way to combat global warming.
	Even those sceptics who question the science of climate change can scarcely attack measures designed to save households and businesses money. For domestic energy efficiency, the Government rely on the energy efficiency commitment to incentivise consumers. A scheme that does not rely exclusively on promotion by electricity suppliers might excite a wider consumer market. We are studying changes to the energy efficiency commitment to allow more businesses to benefit from promoting domestic energy efficiency, a model that could be applied to business customers as well as households.
	The second policy change concerns transport. I recognise that progress has been made in moving towards greener cars, and I am sure that that progress will continue, but transport still accounts for one quarter of CO 2 emissions. As is the case with energy efficiency, we must engage the public and help them to make more environmentally friendly choices. We should not use regulations or force people out of their cars, which is the Deputy Prime Minister's policy, because cars have enhanced the lives of millions of people. A car is the instrument that allows almost everyone today to enjoy freedoms that were confined to the rich 100 years ago.
	One way in which to encourage greener choices by car users is to go much further than the Government in introducing variable rates of vehicle excise duty, which is the direction suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth). That would be more effective than the colour-coded labels recently suggested by the Secretary of State for Transport. I am not against colour-coded labels, which sound suspiciously like a watered-down version of the colour-coded tax discs that I advocated last year as a way to make the impact that a vehicle has on the environment clear to the public.
	An even bigger incentive to buying a greener car than the colour of the label in the showroom would be a wider range of vehicle excise duty rates. Even if such changes applied to new purchases only, they would influence the choice of new vehicles, and everyone would be helped to continue to enjoy driving while reducing the impact of motoring on the public. The Government's approach is far too timid: the difference in vehicle excise duty between a Ferrari and a Smart car is only 50.
	Transport involves more than cars. Aviation, which has already been referred to, is the fastest growing source of CO 2 emissions in the transport sector, and I hope that it will soon fall within the EU emissions trading scheme. A possible tax on aviation fuel also seems to be back in the news. It could make a big contribution to capturing the environmental cost of aviation, but it will work only if it is introduced on an entirely international basis. If international agreement on aviation fuel taxing is eventually reached, some of the other taxes on aviation could be removed.
	More immediately, I am concerned about how little understanding the public have of the link between climate change and aviation. In a survey conducted by the Department for Transport a couple of years ago, only one person in eight made the connection between climate change and flying. We would educate the public about the impact of aviation on the environment if we were, for example, to encourage airlines to show emissions per passenger on travel documents, which would remind people that in environmental terms short-haul flights do not compare well with alternative modes of transport. The more information people are given, the more likely they are to choose the environmentally friendly option.
	The third area of policy change concerns renewable energy. The Government are in a muddle: their obsession with onshore wind farms, one of the least reliable and most unpopular forms of renewable energy, will ensure that they miss their own target for producing 10 per cent. of electricity from renewable sources by 2010. With only five years to go, it would be much better if they admitted that they will miss that target. We should develop a more coherent approach to renewable energy to exploit Britain's natural advantages as an island by using offshore technologies, including tidal power and wave power. In that context, I regret the Government's failure to introduce a marine conservation Bill to facilitate the establishment of offshore areas where marine-based renewable energy projects could flourish.

Tim Yeo: If the hon. Gentleman is so concerned about the effect of Government policy on research, why does he support the present Government's policy, which has effectively choked off nearly all the resources available for research into anything other than wind power? He appears reluctant to call the Government to account for failing to learn the lessons that he says should have been learned by the last Conservative Government.

Tim Yeo: NoI am sorry.
	The fourth area of policy that needs to be changed concerns the planning system, which should be used to avoid making the consequences of climate change worse. For example, planning policy guidance must be strengthened to make it easier for councils to refuse consent for building on flood plains or on sites where development would make flooding more likely because of run-off problems. We must bear it in mind that one of the characteristics of climate change is that rainfall is becoming more violent and we more often experience high winds. I sympathise with the concerns of the Environment Agency about wrongly located development continuing to make the risks of flooding greater. The harm that such development inflicts is not confined to new buildings but can cause problems for existing properties, and in the end it may be the taxpayer who picks up the tab.
	Planning guidance can also contribute positively to cutting carbon dioxide emissions by encouraging development at or near railway stationsa point that I made in a speech just before Christmas. It is frankly a scandal that we have failed, under public and private ownership models, to make better use of the huge brownfield development opportunities that exist around many stations. Starter homes or commercial and retail development on those sites would be beneficial environmentally and in other ways. Planning agreements should ensure that such developments provide funds to improve stations in order to bring them into the 21st century and increase the capacity of the railways at a time of record demand. Those gains could be obtained without taxpayers or travellers having to contribute a penny. Development around stations would offer people more chances to choose environmentally friendly transport options. The Government's role is not to coerce people out of their cars but to facilitate those choices.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: My hon. Friend raises a serious point. Some innovative planning is taking place whereby affordable housing is being built on top of supermarkets, and there is no reason why we should not use our stations more imaginatively by doing the same thing. That would be a sustainable way of going forward, because people's housing would be near to the transport that they are going to use.

Tim Yeo: My hon. Friend is right. The situation is nothing short of scandalous. Those of us who regularly travel by train are aware of how many opportunities there are around the country to use stations and the land immediately around them for development purposes.
	The four changes in domestic policy that I mentioned would add up to a coherent programme to get Britain back on track. With evidence of Britain's determination to tackle climate change at home, we would once more be able to resume our leadership on the issue abroad. Internationally, we should have three aims. First, and most obviously, the Prime Minister should press President Bush much harder, not only on Kyoto but on climate change generally. It is painfully clear that the Prime Minister will not say boo to a goose when it comes to President Bush. What on earth has Britain got in return for its unquestioning support of the United States in the past three years? It does not appear that our influence has been exercised over any important policy area.
	Secondly, as the hon. Member for Lewes said, Britain should be more active in reaching out to those elements in the United States who do take climate change seriously. Some states, industries and companies are clear-sighted enough to see that climate change cannot be ignored. They realise that whether or not the United States ratifies Kyoto, there are advantages to America in taking part in emissions trading, in helping to shape the post-Kyoto framework, and in developing the technologies that will lead to the win-win situation of continued economic growth and steadily falling emissions.
	Thirdly, although it is crucial to engage the United States in the process, it is equally crucial to bring China and India on board. One way in which Britain could put pressure on the United States is to start negotiating international standards with China and India. I am pleased that the Government's chief scientist has recently been in Bangalore. The growth of those giant economies inevitably means that more energy will be consumed, and in particular coal power. The challenge is to accelerate progress towards minimising the environmental impact of that consumption.
	The post-Kyoto framework should have the positive aim of promoting climate stability. The achievement of that aim will not harm business or slow down economic growth, nor will it impede the progress that developing countries make towards greater prosperity. Indeed, climate change is the very background against which developing countries will grow sustainably, and the only background against which that growth will be secure.
	I regret that the Liberal Democrats chose to insert a point-scoring phrase into their motion, because without it I would have been able to give the motion my support. However, I can and do confirm that the Conservative party is wholly committed to the actions needed at home and abroad to achieve climate stability. When we were last in government, we took those actions. While we are in opposition, we will support the Government when they propose policies to promote climate stability; and a future Conservative Government will have those policies right at the top of their agenda.

John Barrett: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that those who are most likely to be the victims of climate change are least likely to have influence over gas emissions and that that is why it is essential to play our part in international discussions about future emissions with emerging industrial nations such as China and India?

Desmond Turner: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, with which I agree. We cannot say, We've had all the fun with fossil fuels but we're going to stop using them now and you mustn't use them. You're going to have to stay poor and undeveloped. That will not wash. As part of our international aid programme, we should put funds into developing and distributing simple, low-cost and low-carbon technologies that are useable in the developing world. I am happy that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office initiated such a programme, which is now an international programme, about two years ago. It is under way but it needs to be developed a great deal more. Our country is fortunate in having technologies that can be applied in that work.
	I am happy that the Government are reviewing their climate change policies. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State would not claim that our policies were currently absolutely right. They need to be overhauled, partly because they were developed when it was a battle to convince people that climate change was real. Now the battle is tackling it and we need a step change in the effectiveness of our policies. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment and Agri-environment can tell us more about the review. I hope that more hon. Members will contribute to the review in a cross-party and collaborative manner. I would even embrace ideas from the hon. Member for South Suffolk.
	The Government must review their policies and reach some consensus. They should also examine the coherence of policies. It is not ideal for DEFRA to have responsibilities for climate change, while responsibility for energy, which is one of the key elements in tackling climate change, is split between DEFRA and the Department of Trade and Industry, the keeper of the key fiscal instrumentsthe Treasuryis a separate Department and the Department for Transport is also involved. At least four major Departments need to work together cohesively to make a future strategy stick. That might mean a change of culture. I do not mean that in a political sense because politicians can speak to each other happily, but we all know that civil servants have a less good record of cross-departmental collaboration. I therefore suggest to my hon. Friend that we also need to consider our civil service structures for underpinning, delivering and developing climate change policy because we could do much more on that.

Sue Doughty: I thank my hon. Friend for that very helpful contribution. Only this week, we heard about the potential for conflict over the Nile waters and the sources of that river.
	We are aware that Sagarmatha national park in the Himalayas is at risk. Glacial lakes are melting, which has an impact on local communities because the water flows down on to the low-lying flood plains. Communities there rely partially on tourism and partially on their normal way of life, which includes the glaciers and the natural beauty of the Himalayas that so many people go to see. That impact threatens their whole way of life and there is a real fear in lakeside communities that those lakes will burst. That would be a catastrophe.
	Major changes to the Arctic and the way of life of the Inuit people have been reported by the WWF, and the British Antarctic Survey has commented on the thinning of the icecaps and its implication for sea levels. The WWF website has a very useful half-minute summary: global temperatures have risen by 2oC in the past 150 years; 228 million people are now at risk from malaria; starvation affects 12 million people; 2 million people are short of fresh water; millions are forced to move inland due to coastal flooding; and thousands of species have become extinct in the past 50 years and we know that many more will do so in the next 50. This is not a criticism of current Ministers at all, but the website comments on the fact that Ministers did not take action 50 years ago. I do not know the source for that information.
	We are experiencing extreme weather conditions: since Christmas there have been floods in Carlisle and in Scotland. There were hurricanes in Florida last year, which do not just damage properties and cause loss of life, but have a huge financial cost that must be recognised. Insurance claims after the hurricanes in Florida could reach $20 billion. That is a huge sum, and an example of the sums we mean when we talk about investing to save.
	Closer to home there is more that we could do. On housing, we agree that we need more homes for people to live in. There are massive increases in the house building programme in the south-east, but we could improve the environmental quality of that programme. Members of Parliament in many parts of the south-east disagree with the Government's calculations on the number of homes needed, their location and how the cake will be divided up. Local authorities have to deal with that problem here and now, and they are already defining guidelines for development that must be sustainable and have Government support, because there are huge opportunities to make sustainable improvements through the housing that we are planning and designing for the future.
	If we are talking about sustainable communities, we must ask what that means. It is very curious that we are unable to find out how the Government define sustainable communities. Everyone in the Chamber today would agree about definitions of sustainability and environmental sustainability, but we do not see the word environment flowing through into the definition of sustainable communities. Those house building programmes bring huge beneficial opportunities such as district heating schemes and combined heat and power. However, after Christmas, the Environmental Audit Committee pointed out in its review of housing:
	We regret that in the case of housing the Department (DEFRA) seems to have been sidelined.
	There are opportunities, however. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has a draft planning policy statement, PPS1, but it does not recognise the need to ensure that development occurs within environmental limits, as well as other sustainability measures. It does not recognise the need for the precautionary principle for environmental sustainability. Does that matter? Of course it does, because emissions from the housing sector are significant: current levels of such emissions are about 40 megatons of carbon a year. Current plans could reduce that to 30 megatons a year, which is an improvement, but when one looks at Government emission reduction targets for the UK as a wholefrom 153.2 megatons of carbon a year in 2000 to 65 megatons in 2050one sees that a reduction of 10 megatons will not be enough.
	The houses we are planning to build now will be in place in 2050. It is important to note that housing does not go away. The foundations that we lay now, and their environmental impact, will be with us in 2050. That makes it sound as though we have a lot of time to get our act together, but melting icecaps and glaciers show that that problem is here now. We think of 2050 as the end of the line, but we have to seize the opportunity now. Considering what we could be facing, poor environmental performance in buildings will be a major contributor to carbon emissions in 2050, and the sector, as the Environmental Audit Committee report pointed out, could contribute more than 55 per cent. of UK carbon emissionsnearly double the current contribution.
	In combination with aviation, that will substantially undermine the Government's ability to meet their reduction targets. We need to ensure that we stay on target, and set tougher targets, if we are to make the difference that will call a halt to climate change, which is desperately important.
	Some areas that the Government are working on, and their change of heart on aviation emissions, are very welcome, but the predict and provide approach must be managed alongside what we can do about aviation emissions. Combined with the effects of building, they will cause a major difficulty. We need to conduct an urgent review now of sustainable construction methods to make an impact on not only the finished buildings and their carbon emissions, but the pollution that will arise as part of the building process.
	I touched on flooding earlier. To return to the macro aspect, there are plans to build across the south-east. A village in my constituency has a road with a number of bungalows; it is on a wide flood plain. There is no big river, but we know that each of those properties is being expanded into a house, and such things as conservatories are being built. As the water runs down the hills into the village, instead of it being soaked up by the clay, people sometimes find 2 in of water lying on their lawn. In fact, people are giving up lawns in this village and growing vegetables because of the impact of the water. That is a very small example, but it shows how we are not getting to grips with this increased and sudden rainfall that we are experiencing so often.
	How much worse will the impact be on Thames gateway as we build on it and there is a displacement of water? We have no plan; we have no clarity about what is the purpose of Thames gateway development. On the one side, we are told that it is providing housing for a regenerated community, but Sir John Egan said to the Environmental Audit Committee that the development is intended to house people commuting into London. Are we therefore building a development with no clear idea about how people will commute into London? Will the railway infrastructure be in place or will they get into their cars? Although the Conservatives are saying that cleaner cars are goodwe all agree with that, and cars have their place, but not every placestationary cars in a traffic jam are no solution to climate change problems. We must do much more. It is sad that the Conservatives, who presided over the undermining of the railways, are now trying to claim the moral high ground. I wish that they had done something about it at the time.
	When we examine the potential for flooding in the Thames gateway, on which many people have commented, we must ask who will insure the properties? For how long will the Association of British Insurers bail people out when things go wrong, or do the Government plan to be the insurer of last resort? I know that that is not currently part of their plans.

Sue Doughty: I am grateful to the Minister for his intervention, but other commentators do not share his confidence about flooding. Only recently, I was at a seminar with developers who expressed severe concern. At least the Thames gateway has infrastructure planned. What about other places, such as Milton Keynes, where there not so much infrastructure will be provided, and places such as Guildford, which is subjected to infill. Displaced water will also be a consequence of such developments, and I would expect to see even more flooding as a result.
	We support the proposal of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister that the Environment Agency should be a statutory consultee on planning applications. The Conservatives, however, would cut the Environment Agency. When will they comment on those proposals and understand their environmental implications?
	The hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Dr. Turner) mentioned methane. This is a subject close to the Minister's heart and mine, and I urge him to ramp up efforts to reduce the amount of biodegradable waste going into landfill. Please can we make sure, with urgency, that councils have the tools that they need to assess levels of home composting and so on, and to make plans to encourage it? Such small steps will make a significant difference to methane emissions.
	Leadership on climate change is needed. We had a peace dividend as the old Soviet empire crumbledwe now want a climate dividend. That opportunity is available, but only if we get our own house in order and exercisie real leadership with allies such as the United States, as well as European allies. As polluters, we must recognise that not only do our people suffer as climate change takes hold but others do, too. It is strange, but on a mild day such as today, instead of people saying, What a lovely dayit is mild in Guildford, where the flowers are coming out in my gardenperhaps they should say a little more often, Why is it so mild at the beginning of February? We must recognise that the problem is here and now, and act on it here and now.

Alan Simpson: I shall try to be as brisk as possible, partly to allow other Members into the debate, but also because I want to make several points that I hope will upset the applecart in relation to the consensus of free trade assumptions on tackling climate change problemsthe consensus that trade liberalisation and a free-for-all are somehow compatible with realising many of the goals that Members have identified today.
	The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has just returned from a Brussels visit, on which we met a large number of Commissioners who were as passionate as any Member who has spoken today about climate change. Those Commissioners were brilliantuntil we talked to other Commissioners with interests in trade, who were clearly running with a completely different agenda. When push came to shove, the environment got the shove. That is the crisis that we must face. It is a crisis of political leadership as much as a crisis of climate change.

Alan Simpson: I accept that that contradiction exists in government, but I want to widen itI believe that the contradiction exists in every party represented in Parliament today. We need to examine the contradictions in each of our own houses. I would love us to fight a general election on climate change. I would love us to say that the biggest issue that will affect the whole of our lives, and the entirety of our children's lives, is climate change, and that we want to be in dispute with each other about which of us can tackle it most seriously and rapidly. We will not do that, however. The general election will be fought on which leader is the most ugly, which party's set of policies are the most contradictory, who are the biggest bunch of scoundrels, and who can be toughest on immigrants. That will miss the big challenges.
	Bob Dylan once wrote in a song:
	You don't need a weather man
	To know which way the wind blows.
	In the same way, we do not need a panel of scientists to tell us about climate change. Let us ask Munich Re, the biggest reinsurance company on the planet, which says that, on current trends, the global economy could be bankrupt by 2050 because of the sheer cost of making good the damage done as a result of climate change. That is the warning bell about which each of us needs to think hard. What is required is a paradigm shift. We need to change how we think about the way we live in the world and how we think about economics.
	In scientific terms, we are told that we must limit temperature rise to 2C higher than it was in pre-industrial times. The terminology that scientists use is that we cannot go above 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmospherewe are now at about 380 parts per million. In layperson's terms, the most important fact is that, on current trends, we would exceed the 400 parts per million figure by about 2015. When Professor Sir David King came to talk to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, he was clear about the time scale and said that it was a much bigger threat than terrorism. As for the 2015 timetable, that is not when the world will end but when, scientists tell us, we will be locked into irreversible change. This is the period in which we can do something.
	Of course this issue concerns more than ourselves. The consequences of climate change will hit the developing world worst and we shall see a huge increase in drought, disease, environmental devastation and mass migration. Some of those problems will come to our shores second-hand, but others will come to us first-hand. At the recent conference in Exeter, the Hadley centre was quick to point out that one of the contradictions of global warming is that we will also experience global cooling. The prospect of the north Atlantic drift ceasing has now reached 50:50. It is not an immediate prospect, but we know that the north Atlantic drift has been weakening over the decades and the consequences are inevitable cooling. The Hadley centre said that on the north Atlantic coast, there may be winter cooling of 5 C, which means temperatures lower than those in the little ice age in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the Thames froze over. We are not well equipped to deal with that change.
	In addition, sea levels will be affected by the melting of the Greenland and west Antarctica icecapssomething we once did not believe possibleand may rise by up to 18ft. Some coastal constituencies will be affected by that more imminently than my constituency, but the prospect of representing Nottingham sur mer is not entirely ludicrous.

Alan Simpson: I am afraid I will not accept any more interventions, as Members are queuing up to make speeches.
	The erratic weather patterns that we have to deal with are a consequence of climate change. Professor King pointed out to the Committee that we must think about how we manage the prospect of flooding and drought in the same month. We are the beneficiaries of an enormously generous piece of over-engineeringthe Victorian sewerage system. No one would build drains of that capacity now, yet most of our cities cannot deal with flash flooding. We therefore need a huge rethink on our engineering programme. At the recent Exeter conference, it was said that even a five-year delay could have a critical impact on our ability to tackle the problem.
	I have five suggestions about what we should do. The good news is that a fantastic array of sustainable technologies are coming on the market. I am incorporating many of them in a derelict place in the middle of Nottingham that will eventually generate 50 per cent. more energy than it consumes. Such developments are exciting, but in 2001, the Prime Minister set aside 5 million so that renewable energy pilot schemes could be targeted on the poorest housing in the country. Sadly, however, since then, the Department of Trade and Industry has not been able to get a single pilot off the ground. There are 2 million households living in fuel poverty. I asked the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister how many properties in the UK's housing stock would meet SAP 65, the minimum standard for establishing a framework to address fuel poverty. On 20 January, I was told that
	16 per cent. of the housing stock meets or exceeds SAP 65.[Official Report, 20 January 2005; Vol. 429, c. 1044W.]
	That shows how behind we are in tackling things.
	How can we establish a programme that develops the resources and policy changes to address that problem? First, we need a windfall tax on oil and gas producers. Early-day motion 504 explains that they have enjoyed at least 5 billion in excess profits upstream as a result of increased prices, and I am told that it may be as much as 9 billion. The public and the Government should take a scoop of those profits and put them into renewables. Secondly, as some people believe in market solutions, we must change the market rules. I have recently had a number of rows with developers in my own city, as not one of them has put up buildings that self-generate energy or recycle their own water. They are not required to do so, so if we want such initiatives we must change the concept of building in our society. We should set market rules under which people have obligations so that, for example, they cannot put up a building on a flood plain unless they build in a reservoir capacity. There are cities on the planet that are already doing so, and in some countries developers are required to incorporate self-generation in the design of buildings. We do not have such requirements, because we let people build on the cheap. We steal today from the prospects of tomorrow.
	Thirdly, we have an absurd approach to energy markets. Not a single energy company in the land will talk about its business plan for selling less. There is a simple way of tackling that: we change the rules to allow companies to sell conservation rather than consumption. They could sell packages of home warmth in long-term supply packages, to stimulate the consumption of less.
	Fourthly, on international commitments, the time has come to scrap the World Trade Organisation and replace it with a world environment organisation. The criteria for assessment would be produced by sustainability audits in which we looked at the patterns of global trade. We must ask ourselves how much of today's trade consists of water sequestration by the north from the south. How many food miles result in carbon dumping on the planet? To what extent are long-term food contracts built on assumptions about the intensification of agriculture, whereas we should be looking at localisation and sustainability.
	A number of Members have said that we must focus on the USA, but I agree with the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Mr. Barrett) that it is more important to look at China. The Chinese Government have guaranteed their population that within the next 10 years every family with one child will have one car, shifting car ownership from 33 per 1,000 to 333 per 1,000. The earth would suffocate under that programme, which is not an unreasonable one. The trouble is that we do not ask what sort of vehicles are being made available in developing world markets.
	Finally, to address the problem we need to consider a gift relationship in future, rather than one of exploitation. The history of the last century is one in which we dumped on the developing world the products and practices that we banned in our own land, calling it aid or development. We need a gift relationshipTitmuss talked about it in terms of blood transfusion or the blood donor service in the UKthat is writ large on a global scale and scripted out in environmental terms. If we act selflessly in gifting the technology to others and ourselves, we have a chance of creating an environment fit for our children to live and breathe in. If we do not, the free trade follies that constantly push the environmental agenda to the sidelines of policy will destroy the planet. We will not achieve sustainable economics, and instead will have a world that is driven by no economics at all.
	As I said, I would love political parties to fight the next election on the issue of who has the best environmental record and programme. The real question is whether any of the parties in the House have the courage to occupy a platform on which our children's lives depend.

Simon Thomas: I am grateful for being called to speak immediately after that invitation from the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson), as there is one political party that will make climate change a priority at the election. I agreed with almost everything that he said, and I can assure him that he will sympathise with many things in our manifesto. I am afraid, however, that people will not have a chance to vote for us in England.
	I am very pleased indeed that the Liberal Democrats have called for this Opposition day debate. I acknowledge that they have used such debates to introduce such matters in the House, whereas the Government have been rather remiss in providing debates on climate change. The usual suspects are in the Chamber. [Interruption.] Indeed, people can see for themselves where there are gaps on the Benches. We have reached consensus on the science of climate change, but we do not have consensus on the political tasks needed to deal with the problem. I shall get the political bit over before I address more consensual matters. If any party, MP or member of a party thinks that we can achieve a carbon-free future without using wind energy they are shutting the door on a solution to climate change. Anyone who thinks that that is a realistic prospect will let down severely the people of this country, the environment and future generations.
	The Conservative party has said no to any wind farms whatever in Wales. That is totally unsustainable and I simply cannot accept it as a policy with which to tackle climate change. It is possible to discuss the right mix and the need to invest in wave, solar and other forms of renewable technology, but it is impossible to talk seriously about achieving the 20 per cent. renewable target without including both onshore and offshore wind power.
	I also have to say that there have been no significant wind farm proposals for Wales that the Liberal Democrats-whether a parliamentary candidate in my own constituency, a Member of Parliament or an Assembly Member-have failed to oppose. Indeed, Liberal Democrats of some significance and seniority have opposed all those plans. The hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) is not in his place now, but I acknowledge the important work that he has done on these matters. I hope that he can lead his party in securing a more proactive acceptance of the need to use wind on our journey towards the carbon-free future. The wonder of wind energy is that, if we do not need it in 20 or 30 years' time, we can take the structures down and leave the environment as it was-virtually, though not completely, unchanged. That aspect is so different from other forms of energy generation that we need to swallow the pill. I am prepared, and have long been prepared, to swallow it in my own constituency in Wales, and I hope that: other parties will, too.
	Let us consider what is happening with the environment at present. The public at large, newspapers and the media tend to talk about climate change as if it is something that is going to happen, but it is important to emphasise that it is happening now. We are already very close to the tipping points-the points at which climate change becomes disastrous. A UK voluntary network is run by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, and it observes changes throughout the calendar year. It is easy to see from that research over the past 30 years that spring is definitely arriving earlier. I had roses in my garden at Christmas, and a fig tree that is starting to shoot.
	We all know what is happening, but it is good to have confirmation. Swallows are arriving a week earlier than they did 30 years ago, and butterflies are also appearing much earlier. One consequence is that species, particularly bird species, are hatching after the glut of caterpillars has gone. The birds are unable to capitalise on the caterpillars, as it were, that have already been and gone in the early spring. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has provided figures, and it puts in context the occasional bird strike against the wind farms. That happens occasionally, and there are sometimes bird strikes against my house. At least one bird a year dies flying into my windows-more than died in the wind farm recently in Ceredigion. Mass bird extinction under climate change has to be placed in the context of the occasional bird strike.
	Within Wales during the past 14 months, the valley of Conwy alone has had three serious breaches of its flood defences. The villages in the valley had three occurrences during the last 14 months that should happen only once every 20 years. Furthermore, the key statistics for Wales, published only a fortnight ago, clearly show a 1C rise in average temperatures over the past three years compared with the 1960-1990 period. That is important.
	The latest report on climate change has come from the international climate change taskforce, chaired by the previous Secretary of State for Transport, and I was pleased to hear him repudiate-on Radio 4 when he launched the report-many of his transport decisions. Let us hope that the current Department for Transport will follow suit. The report states:
	Above the 2 degree C level, the risks of abrupt, accelerated, or runaway climate change also increase. The possibilities include reaching climatic tipping points leading, for example, to the loss of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets..
	The hon. Member for Nottingham, South made a similar point. The report goes on to refer to
	the transformation of the planet's forests and soils from a net sink of carbon to a net source of carbon,
	recommending that at least 25 per cent. of our electricity should be generated from renewables.
	Just a week after the publication of that report came the report from the British Antarctic Survey, showing that the west Antarctic ice sheet is indeed in danger of collapse. If an international taskforce argues that 2 is the tipping point, and if the figures on Wales show that we are already 1 higher, we are already very close indeed to some disastrous changes taking place within the United Kingdom. That demonstrates why political parties should be placing these issues on top of the agenda, irrespective of whether the press want to talk about it in the context of posters, images or dirty campaigning. This issue should, in 2005, be the focus of all our political campaigning. We must do what we can in our constituencies, but hon. Members will know how difficult it sometimes is to get these essential messages across.
	One important issue that has not been mentioned-we have mainly talked about political and public responsibility-is business and corporate responsibility. It is crucial to understand that we all have to pull together in tackling climate change. We have already heard a little about Shell and BP and their massive profits-bigger, together, than the entire budget for Wales in a year. Let us consider Shell-described by the hon. Member for Lewes as one of the better companies on the grounds that it had accepted the science of climate change. The company posted massive profits, yet is still asking for UK Export Credits Guarantee Department and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development support to help it develop oil and gas pipelines in Sakhalin in Russia. Shell is still involved in gas flaring in Nigeria, which produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa put together. These 'goodies', then, have accepted the science of climate change, but continue to exploit developing countries by using technology that we would not allow in this country, producing greenhouse gas emissions that offset any savings that the companies are making in this country.
	To be honest, I am not certain that a windfall tax is the answer, but something has to be done to bring these companies to book and to ensure that their corporate social responsibility is dedicated to tackling climate change. They should use much of their massive profits in order to invest in other technologies. That is, after all, to the good of their shareholders in the long run.
	The Government have made some progress in respect of the overall basket of greenhouse gases, but as we have already heard, they are seriously short of targets on CO2 reduction. Indeed, if current trends continue, the projection for 2010 suggests a reduction of 7.7 per cent., as compared with the Kyoto obligation of 12.5 per cent., the manifesto commitment of 20 per cent., and indeed the Prime Minister's own commitment given to the House in December of 14 per cent. That was the commitment that he gave to the leader of the Liberal Democrat party.
	It is also important to remember that the UK figures do not include aviation. It has been mentioned a couple of times in the debate, but needs to be emphasised. Aviation is not included in the national greenhouse gas inventories. If aviation were included, we would be talking about figures about 5 per cent. higher. I hope that the Minister will deal with the problem in his winding-up speech. I understand why international agreements mean that we cannot go ahead now and tax aviation fuel, but I also understand that it is possible to tax emissions. What are the Government doing in respect of emission taxation, which would help to drive better technology within the aviation industry without necessarily hugely increasing costs? The costs of the aviation industry need to be put on record. Research shows that the richer people in society are the ones who benefit from cheap flights, often to their second homes in Bayonne or the Navarre valley or wherever. Less well-off people do not benefit much from cheap flights.
	Climate change is a huge challenge for political parties and the political consensus in this country, but there are also huge opportunities. This island is the part of Europe with the greatest renewable energy resources. Our solar energy may not be so good, but the wind, wave and tidal energy available to us is very great. We could power the whole of western Europe with energy from wind. The installations would not look very nice, but we have that potential, and we need to start finding creative ways to benefit our communities in that way.
	For example, we could allow people to put small turbines on their homes. That would accommodate those who oppose wind farms. If we chose to do that, we should not make people fill out a 19-page form from Ofgem so that they could sell energy back to the network. Another possibility is to give council tax rebates to people who install renewable energy equipment in their homes. We should try and incentivise people in a different way. It is too complicated to convince people to go for the Clear Skies initiative. That is too remote: if we want people to choose renewable energy in their daily lives, we have to make it much easier for them.
	Time is short so I shall end with a myth-the myth of Cantre'r Gwaelod. This Welsh folk tale harks back to a time when there was no sea between Wales and Ireland, and it is true that at one time the two countries were not separated by water. The relevant area was flooded as a result of the neglect of a politician, whose name has come down over the centuries. He was not called Blair or Howard, but Seithennen. If we politicians do not want future generations to think of us as the ones who neglected our environment, and if we do not want those future generations to live in caves remembering a time when a civilisation existed before the flood came, we need to be aware of the myths and stories of the past.
	Climate change is no myth. What is happening to our environment is no folk tale. We should work to ensure that our reputation in history is a good one and we are recalled with approbation. To do that, we must tackle climate change now.

Colin Challen: I shall make my contribution as brief as possible. I want to speak about the costs to business of environmental regulations. That is an especially important matter in the context of this debate.
	Sir Digby Jones gave evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee. What he said was very revealing. It is clear that he accepts that climate change is taking place. He supports contraction and convergence, even though the Confederation of British Industry is restless in the face of the costs that appear to be imposed on it by the Government. That complaint is reflected in the rather fallacious arguments of the Copenhagen consensus, whose members say that other problems should be dealt with first as climate change is too expensive to deal with.
	The report entitled Cry Wolf has been referred to already this afternoon. Prepared by the International Chemical Secretariat on behalf of WWF, it shows how business lobby groups consistently have predicted excessive costs in relation to environmental regulation. For example, the directive from the former EEC on vehicle emission standards introduced the catalytic converter in the early 1990s. Industry experts said that fitting that equipment would cost an extra 600 per car. As it turned out, the extra cost was more in the region of 60. The report states:
	It led to smaller, cheaper cars being equipped with more sophisticated engines and fuel management technologies which in turn led to improved fuel efficiency in spite of the supposed fuel consumption penalty of the catalyst.
	The report goes on to detail the new technology's indirect benefits. Some 12 years on from the introduction of catalytic converters, researchers this year calculated that the health benefits alone amounted to some 2 billion.
	Another example of the predictions made by business can be found in the introduction to amendments made to the US Clean Air Act 1990. The industry predicted that unbearable costs would be attached to those amendments. The maximum figure for those costs was $91 billion, although the real extra costs amounted to $26 billion. I admit that that is still a lot of money, but a White House study found that the changes had produced benefits worth $192 billion.
	There are so many other examples of the sort of predictions that the business can come up with that I am very concerned at the impact that industrial lobby groups can have in getting regulations watered down. It is regrettable that our national allocation planpart of the EU's emissions trading schemeseems to have fallen victim to that process and as a result has become a bit more generous. Once again, industry seems to have been rewarded from crying wolf. It is time for those of us who take climate change seriously to cry foul.
	Under the UK's emissions trading scheme, industry received a windfall of around 200 million of taxpayers' money. I recommend that everyone reads the slim Public Accounts Committee report on its inquiry into how the UK scheme operated, because it provides an insight into how the Government handled that innovation. There were teething problems and, as expected, money was thrown at it to get it going. Business benefited to the tune of 200 million, but it still cried foul when we tried to introduce more regulations and the climate change levy, which is business neutral and should be kept and improved, if possible.
	Another issue that concerns me is grandfathering. Grandfathers are known as kindly, old gentlementhere may be one or two in the Chamberwho are blessed with wisdom, authority and far-sightedness. However, in the world of pollution controls and environmental regulation, grandfathering means that industry can claim that its old plant should be exempt from many controls. That is how George W. Bush approached the problem of oil industry pollution when he was governor of Texas; he gutted the Clean Air Act 1990, which had been amended by his father. Now, we want to grandfather future emissions based on industry growth expectations or predictions so that emissions from the growth can be accommodated without breaking the rules. Even if we have an effective emissions trading scheme, it may allow for growth and emissions and I am sure that many people will find that odd. We should be looking for absolute reductions in emissions and I hope that we will strengthen the European scheme, include aviation, and introduce lower baselines than industry expects. We need to take a much tougher line.
	I welcome the international climate change task force report, which was co-chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tyneside, North (Mr. Byers). Interestingly, the other co-chair was a Republican Senator, Olympia Snowe, which shows that some members of Mr. Bush's party are concerned enough to engage with the science, even if he is not. The report calls for immediate action, such as a twofold increase in research, development and demonstration of renewable energy technologies. It also calls for removal of barriers to the development of such industries and for the abolition of fossil fuel subsidies. I forget how many sisters we have left among the oil companies, but it is amazing that they are reporting such massive profits and still sharing in the $80 billion of subsidy.
	Another recommendation in the report is to build on the global climate change framework of both the United Nations framework convention on climate change and Kyoto. It refers to a new basis of equity and common, but differentiated, responsibilities. As someone who supports contraction and convergence, that is the meaning that I want to read into it, but I understand why its authors would not want to say that explicitly. However, the notion of equity is not ambivalent in its report. There is no equitable distribution of carbon emissions at present. The earth's capacity to absorb carbon is put at 3 billion tonnes, but our current emissions amount to around 6 billion tonnes, or 1 tonne for every member of the human race. In this country, we emit around 24 tonnes per household per annum and that figure is higher in the United States.
	Those statistics demonstrate the inequitable distribution of carbon emissions and pollution more generally. We need environmental equity as well as carbon emissions trading and so on. We need a cap and trade programme, and contraction and convergence is the name that we must give to it. We must link that battle with the battle against poverty. I hope to hear about that link more often in the speeches of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, because we are making the poor poorer with policies that do not tackle carbon emissions. Marginal agricultural land will become unusable and drought, the failure of the Indian monsoon and so on will make the task of tackling poverty much more difficult. We must make that link.

Malcolm Bruce: This has been a good and lively debate. Indeed, we could have had a full-day debate on the subject and I urge the Government to consider that. After all, the Prime Minister has made it clear that he wants to make climate change central to our presidency of both the EU and the G8. This is the third debate initiated by the Liberal Democrats in this Parliament to ensure that we debate the environment and the House should appreciate that we have done that in the limited time available to us for such debates. There is clearly plenty of scope for debate and many people want to contribute. It would help to inform the Government's approach if they gave us such opportunities and I hope that the Minister will feed that back.

Malcolm Bruce: I am sorry, I do not have time. I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman wants to intervene but I have only 10 minutes for my speech and even so it will be impossible to summarise the whole debate.
	What has been interesting about the debate is that a variety of speeches have stressed that the science is incontrovertible, that time presses urgently and that we need radical measures on which we should co-operate to support. The problem is that the Conservative party has not been fully part of that. We have heard only one speech from the Conservative Benches during the entire debate. Conservative Back-Benchers have made some constructive interventions, but they were less than supportive of their Front-Bench policy and they are no longer in the Chamber. That is a challenge, because we shall be unable to address the radical climate change policies that are needed if the Conservative party is not fully on board working with us.
	The Conservatives have suggested that they want to get rid of the climate change levy and would cut the Environment Agency's budget. They are going round the country campaigning energetically against wind energy while acting as a front for a nuclear power industry that has no economic case to make. Although I will accept some strictures from the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas) on the activity of certain people, we should be clear that not every wind farm is ideally located and that planning issues are legitimate.
	As a party, the Liberal Democrats are clear that wind energy is crucial in the short term to meet the renewable energy targets that we have undertaken under Kyoto. As a Scottish Member, I can say that both our Ministers in the partnership Government in Edinburgh are up front in promoting and encouraging wind energy developments. Last week, I walked over a wind farm site in my constituency that will be generating electricity this summer. I have also supported a fairly controversial application that is going through the process. People who oppose wind energy in principle, or who in practice oppose every development, are actually setting themselves against addressing the climate change agenda. It is as simple as that. One cannot be in favour of dealing with that issue and oppose wind energy either in principle or in practice.

Malcolm Bruce: I know how long the hon. Gentleman has been waiting so I will give way, but I should be grateful if he could be quick.

Malcolm Bruce: It was a serious mistake to allow the hon. Gentleman to intervene. The fact is that our party in Edinburgh is critical of the scheme, not the principle, as he knows perfectly well. At the end of the day, with some debate and argument, we might come up with a scheme that we can both support. That is what debate is about.
	We have had our differences with the Government on some of the central issues on the climate change agenda. Sometimes we do not think that the Government are radical enough and sometimes that their schemes will work, but our debates are about how to come up with mechanisms that will deliver results. There are many aspects of what the Government are doingtheir commitment and the mechanismsthat we can and do support, but we need more mechanisms to bring on some of the alternative schemes that are not delivering at present. That is not a criticism of what the Government are doing, but a recognition that, if there are too many schemes, things become too complicated and people do not respond.
	I urge the Minister to consider other aspects of renewables, such as timber. Our forestry industry could make a substantial contribution, yet it is being frustrated because a time horizon on co-firing could lead to a sudden drop in the market unless there is a recognition that we need both coppicing and off-cuts to become a long-term part of that process. Schemes that involve not electricity generation but space heating using renewable energy and more efficient systems must be encouraged.
	The Minister will be familiar with the fact that, with the right mechanisms to increase the promotion of energy efficiency, we could also produce a mechanism that could deliver the expansion of combined heat and power that we all want yet are failing to achieve. In fact, combined heat and power can do more than anything else to help us to meet our 2010 targets, yet its development has come to a complete halt. I urge the Government to think about such mechanisms.
	I am pleased that the Secretary of State spoke and engaged with us very seriously on this matter. It is important to make it clear that criticisms of the United States Administration's policies, particularly their hostility to the Kyoto protocol, should not blind anyone to the fact that the US has an enormous contribution to make towards solving the problem, both by changing its own behaviour and by providing the technology that it has the capacity to contribute. One of the encouraging things about the US is that it will make a substantial contribution to that technology regardless of the US Administration's policy.
	The hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) rightly highlighted the problems of countries such as China and India and the need for us to balance their development with the contribution that we can make. That is another reason why I believe strongly that we must recognise the fact that nuclear power is not the solution. Anyone who tries to reactivate nuclear power is blocking the solution, as our past experience shows. The best way that I can describe the nuclear power industry is as a cuckoo in the nest: it sucks all the resources from every other aspect of energy to the point where no other innovation takes place.
	We have an overhang of nuclear waste clean-up costs estimated at 50 billion or more. We have also have an overhang in that producing electricity with nuclear power costs us more than most other forms of electricity production. Those people who complain that the introduction of renewable energy costs a little more should recognise that the sums involved are a fraction of the extra costs that we have already paid for the nuclear industry, which never delivered any of its early promise. It is a question not of being anti-nuclear, but of acknowledging that the resources that nuclear power devours displace everything else. We simply cannot afford to be taken down that track.
	The Secretary of State also rightly a made pleaanother challenge to the Conservative party to come on board in this respectto stop talking about the science, about which we all agree, and to agree about the radical measures that we need to take together to deal with the fundamental problem. All political parties have had difficulties with high fuel costsa policy intended to discourage car use, or at least to try to connect the car with its environmental impact. That has caused considerable tensionsthe blockades embarrassed us allbut we have sustained that policy.
	The solution depends on all the major parties being prepared to stand together. The Conservative party's answer to congestion charging is to build more roads, but it exploits the difficulties of making such decisions. The reality is that strong cross-party support is required, particularly in the earlier stages. As the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Dr. Turner) put it, the problem is so serious and severe that those radical measures, which may not appear popular, are so important that we should all be prepared to stand together to defend and justify them because bigger issues are at stake. So long as a significant political party is playing party politics in that scenario, it will undermine what we can achieve andas the hon. Member for Nottingham, South sayswe may have passed the point of no return by 2015. In 10 years' time, there may not be the capacity to introduce policies that can turn the tide.
	This is an important debate. I challenge the Government to recognise the fact that, if they are seriouswe believe that they areabout their priorities for the G8 and the EU, they must have regular debates during the presidency to report back and give the House an opportunity to inform them and, indeed, perhaps back them up in their negotiations in those important forums. If things really are as serious as the Government say, they should take Parliament with them and not act simply as an Executive. Plenty of hon. Members are willing to support the Government in those difficult decisions, and they should give us the chance to tell them so.

Elliot Morley: We have had a good debate in which hon. Members have made excellent contributions. I agreed with a great deal of what was said and the Government will support the motion because its thrust is exactly right.
	The hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) made a good case and highlighted the political aspects of climate change that we must all address. I also accept the points made by the hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce). It would not be unreasonable for the Government to offer an opportunity to debate the G8 process and the Prime Minister's priorities, so I shall certainly discuss that with the business managers.
	The hon. Member for Gordon also made a good critique of the situation and raised important points about such matters as co-firing. Co-firing has excellent potential in relation to biomass and the timber industry, so we are keen to encourage it. Indeed, we are keen to encourage all forms of renewables and technologies, which include combined heat and power. The Government are examining the barriers to the development of CHP to find out how we can assist the situation. I accept the points that he made about nuclear power. The costs are enormous, so perhaps money could be better spent on other renewables at this stage of energy development. However, some of the problems with nuclear might be resolved down the line, which could lead to a different argument and changed priorities. We keep an open mind on the pros and cons of all technologies.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Dr. Turner) made several excellent points about climate change and talked about the importance of fiscal measures. I accept his point and shall return to it. The hon. Member for Guildford (Sue Doughty) mentioned housing standards, which are important. We plan to raise housing standards and to apply and develop the new code that was produced by the sustainable buildings task group. I understand her point about the report on adaptation and apologise for its having slipped. That is partly due to the work that must be done across government, but it will be available in May.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) talked powerfully about the international dimensions of the situation and mentioned building regulations. I am interested in the concept of white certificates when considering energy efficiency. We have a successful system of carbon trading and I look forward to the EU scheme. Of course, that is the trade of what are known as black certificates because carbon is being sold. There is a suggestion that bodies that meet standards of energy efficiency and carbon reduction could receive white certificates and I think that such a scheme would address the points that he made.
	The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas) was right to talk about the realities of wind because wind is crucial if we are serious about meeting renewable targets. Given market preferences and the establishment of necessary technology, it is thought that wind will make up about 70 per cent. of renewables. If we turn our back on wind, we are turning our back on renewable targets. I do not know whether the Conservative party is turning its back on renewable targets, but that is the end result of rejecting wind.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Rothwell (Mr. Challen) said that industry predictions are often exaggeratedwe know of examples of that. He also talked about contraction and convergence. Such concepts have a considerable following, so we must examine them carefully, even though, like all such matters, they have pros and cons.
	There was, however, some misinformation in the debate. I am genuinely interested in some of the Conservative party's positions, but find them a little confusing. Since 1997, CO 2 has risen overall by about 0.4 per cent. It has gone up and down over the years. Other greenhouse gases, such as methane, nitrogen oxide, sulphur hexaflouride, hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons have all decreased by about 6 per cent. since 1997. The UK and Denmark are the only two countries in the EU that are meeting their Kyoto targets. We have a good record on Kyoto, but if I were asked whether that was good enough, I would say no of course it is not and that we have to do more to reduce greenhouse gases and CO 2 . That is the whole point of the ongoing climate change review.
	On our commitment to a 20 per cent. reduction in CO 2 by 2010, the modelling is predicting that we will achieve a 14 per cent. dropfirst an increase and then a falling away. However, that does not take into account the impact of the European emissions trading scheme, which will be significant, or other measures that we may bring forward as a result of the climate change review. I think that we can get on track to achieve a 20 per cent. reduction by 2010, and it is our intention to do so.
	I am genuinely confused by some of the points that have been made in the debate, such as the Conservative proposal to abolish the climate change levy. The levy is revenue-neutral in the sector, because companies that are part of the scheme receive a reduction in employer's national insurance, and money goes to the Carbon Trust. The hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) gave an assurance that a future Conservative Administration would maintain the funding that goes into the Carbon Trust, which currently comes from the climate change levy. On that logic, the Conservatives are suggesting moving away from making the polluters pay to putting the burden on the taxpayer. That does not strike me as a good, sensible green fiscal tax.

Tim Yeo: I do not know why the Minister is expressing such surprise, because it has always been our position that once emissions trading is fully underway, the principal reason for a climate change levy is removed.

Elliot Morley: The hon. Gentleman is ignoring the fact that the climate change levy is a revenue-neutral tax: it goes back to the sector to improve energy efficiency. It is a green fiscal measure. I support what he said about the scope for extending green fiscal measures, and there is further debate to be had, but such comments are undermined by his point on the climate change levy. It does not make any sense; it is a contradiction.
	Let us take the Conservatives' position on wind power, which is an important renewable. It is a myth that wind power is the Government's only policy. We are spending 50 million on marine energy42 million on tide and wave60 million on biomass, which does not include the reduction in duty, 31 million on photovoltaics, 171 million on offshore windthere is no spending on the development of onshore wind, because that is well establishedand 12.5 million on community and household schemes. So let us not hear the myth that the Government's one approach is in wind power and that we are not supporting other forms of renewable energy.

Elliot Morley: I am sorry, but I have only a couple of minutes left.
	The hon. Member for South Suffolk seems to be suggesting that he would give local communities a right of veto over every wind farm development. I make it clear that I am not against planning procedures properly taking into account people's representations, but the proposal would mean no onshore wind development in this country. If there is no onshore wind development, there is not the slightest chance of meeting the renewables targets, because all independent analysts predict that 70 per cent. of renewable energy will come from wind power. That is a resource that we in this country should exploit.
	Although I welcome the consensus shown by this debate and the thoughtful and considered contributions that were made to it, there is a contradiction at the heart of Conservative policy. If the Conservatives oppose renewable energy, abandon targets and give up any pretence of sharing the commitments that we have made to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, they should be honest and admit that they have caved in to industry pressure and given up the green agenda.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Resolved,
	That this House endorses the comments of Sir David King that climate change is the most serious threat facing the planet and congratulates him on his work in this area; welcomes the Prime Minister's commitment to make the tackling of climate change a top priority for the United Kingdom's presidencies of the EU and G8 this year; reiterates the UK commitment to a 60 per cent. reduction in carbon emissions by 2050; strongly welcomes the coming into force of the Kyoto agreement on 16th February and the strong role the European Union has played in achieving this; believes that it is vital that, post Kyoto, the international community works to reach agreement on the action needed to tackle climate change, which should engage the United States but which should also recognise the importance of the energy choices which face many of the major developing countries; calls on the global community to work with them in addressing those choices; rejects the notion that tackling climate change will of necessity damage the economy and indeed suggests that it is failure to do so that will lead to that result; believes that all parties in this House should by their own actions help convince the public of the need to take environmental matters seriously; and therefore condemns Conservative plans severely to weaken the Environment Agency through the massive and debilitating cuts proposed for the Agency by that party, and its damaging plans to abolish the climate change levy.

Mark Oaten: I think that I decided on Thursday morning, when I was struck by the enormous amount of media debate on the subject. I thought that the Chamber was the proper place for that debate, which is why we are discussing the Belmarsh judgment today. I see the Minister nodding.
	This is an early opportunity to explore some of the issues, but first let me make two things crystal clear. First, we welcome the fact that the Home Secretary came to the Floor of the House to announce his proposals. For too long, legal judgments and the rulings of the Law Lords were dismissed or ignored by the previous Home Secretary. At least we now have a Home Secretary who is prepared to engage in debate. We do not agree with the proposals, but we welcome the opportunity to participate in debate and find a sensible solution.
	Secondly, the Liberal Democrats in no way underestimate the seriousness of the threats facing this country. The fact that we differ from the Government on how to tackle those threats does not mean that we do not recognise that the world has changed since 9/11 and that we now face a different problem of international terrorism. It is worth putting on the record our acknowledgement of the fact that we all owe our intelligence services a enormous debt of respect and gratitude for their achievements in the past three or four years. It is nothing short of remarkable we have been able, with the help of their work, to avoid the type of atrocity that we have witnessed in other parts of the world.
	The question before us is one of balance. We all walk a tightrope: on the one hand, we must ensure that we have in place the proper protections in a changed world; on the other, we must protect the very liberties that the terrorists would take away from us. In our judgment, the Government have got that balance wrong in the past three years and the measures proposed by the new Home Secretary a couple of weeks ago will make the position worse in many ways.
	Let me examine some of the ideas and propose some alternatives in a constructive way, to see whether we can achieve a measure of consensus on the way forward. Before doing so, I wish to make an observation about the level of threat. Although I do not question the general threat facing this country, questions have arisen about the threat posed by the individuals held in Belmarsh. I am mindful of your ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker, about being careful in our remarks, and as an Opposition Member who does not have access to full information about those individuals, I accept that Ministers might know more than we do, but the release last week of the former detainee known as C raised some concerns.
	I understand that intelligence and information can change. I understand that the Special Immigration Appeals Commission reviewed the case on a couple of occasions. None the less, it seems strange that one day an individual is regarded as being so much of a danger to this country that he can be held without charge, but the next day that individual can be released without any conditions. That seems like an extraordinary shift from black to white.

Mark Oaten: I want to make bit of progress.
	As for the Government's approach, for the past three years, as we know, detainees have been held without charge. The cases have been under review from the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. As a result of the Government's actions, there has been a need to seek annual review by this House of a derogation from the European convention on human rights. It is fair to say that there were many in the first six months and each year thereafter who were prepared to accept that the Government were dealing with a difficult situation and to give them some leeway, but three years on, that mood has certainly disappeared, and the Liberal Democrats made the judgment last spring that we would vote against that derogation.
	The Newton committee has been extremely critical of what the Government have said. In December 2003, the committee, which comprises some of the most senior Members in all parts of the House, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), who is sitting on the Benches behind me, said:
	We strongly recommend that the powers which allow foreign nationals to be detained potentially indefinitely should be replaced as a matter of urgency.
	Furthermore, some of the individuals who sit on the Special Immigration Appeals Commission resigned. Mr. MacDonald, who represented the interests of five detainees, became an advocate when SIAC was purely an immigration court dealing with cases that involved national security. He described it as becoming an internment court, however, and said:
	I was increasingly uncomfortable at my position in there, and after the government's reaction to the judgment, I decided it was time to go . . . It's something I've been thinking about for some time. The House of Lords' judgment was so very clear about the need to defend the rule of law and I felt that our role is legitimising something I don't think can be legitimised.
	Of course, the Law Lords' ruling was made at the end of last year. They ruled by a majority of eight votes to one that allowing suspects to be held in the way in which they have been held was in breach of their human rights. Lord Nicholls, for example, said that
	indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial is anathema in any country which observes the rules of law.
	Lord Hoffmann said:
	The real threat to the life of the nation comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these.
	The Government have had many warnings, and they have now at last decided to respond. I want to look at their response, but before I get on to the individual measures, I want also to suggest that we should judge those measures on the basis of two overriding principles. From the Liberal Democrat perspective, those principles are as follows. First, we should not have measures that give the Executive alone the power to take these decisions. Secondly, we should not have to seek a derogation or opt-out from our international responsibilities and from conventions. Those two principles should be the benchmark for deciding what Government measures we can support and which ones we will reject.
	Let us look and see how the measures match up against those two criteria. The Government have suggested that house detention be used as part of a control order. We think that that is unacceptable. First, we believe that it would require a further derogation, and the Home Secretary said as much when he came to the House and was questioned by the Opposition parties.
	I do not know whether the Minister can say whether further legal advice has been taken, but the Home Secretary indicated that house detention would probably require a derogation and Liberty and other organisations think that it would fall foul of our international responsibilities.
	The second problem with house detention is that it covers UK nationals, which is totally unacceptable. The third problem with house detention is that it still leaves the power purely with the Home Secretary. If it were to get through the House, the detainees would be likely to challenge it, in which case the Law Lords would probably vote against it three years down the track after various cat and mouse rulings and the Government would be no better off than they are at the moment.
	Irrespective of those legal concerns and the likelihood that house arrest would be challenged, do we want to live in the kind of society in which the Home Secretary has the power to hold people under house arrest or house detention? Whatever the Government call that policy, that is what it is about. The issue may not involve this Home Secretary, but surely we have a responsibility to legislate for what future Home Secretaries might wish to do. When we legislate in this House, we should legislate not for today, but for what might happen in the future. Giving the Home Secretary the power to hold individuals in that way is totally unacceptable.

Graham Allen: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on how he has conducted the debate and his party on choosing this important subject for half of its precious Supply day. As well as worrying about how future Home Secretaries might use that power, is it not apposite to consider what recent Home Secretaries, for example, the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), might have done with it? It would be benign in some hands and a frightening prospect in others.

Vera Baird: I apologise for not being present from the outset and for being very stuffed up. The comparison with North Korea, Myanmar and Zimbabwe is not correct. Nobody has suggested for one second that the courts would not closely supervise such a power, if it were necessary to take it. There is no reason why a decision by the Home Secretary should not include an automatic and immediate right of appeal, which does not exist in any of the three countries mentioned by the hon. Gentleman.

Mark Oaten: The right hon. Gentleman has made a good point.
	The Government's second suggestion is control orders. I have a little bit more sympathy with the ideas of control orders, when they do not involve house detention. Lower forms of control orders would probably not require a derogationagain, legal advice would be required on that pointso they tick that particular box, although they might give the Executive too much power. That is an important issue, and it may be a way forward, particularly in respect of how we can use tagging, limits on access to communicationsto phones and computersor perhaps even restrictions on access to financial services.
	We would support the measures on control orders if a number of conditions were met. First, they should be issued by judges. Secondly, there should be absolute confirmation that they would not require a derogation. Thirdly, they should be time-limited and renewable with judicial oversight. Fourthly, they should not be used if there is a proper prospect of prosecution taking place. That is a perfectly sensible way forward, through which we could achieve the balance that is being sought between having some control and building in the judicial process. I hope that the Government will consider those suggestions on control orders.
	On whether control orders should be used as an alternative to prosecution, we differ an awful lot from the Government. This is a key issue. As the Newton committee said,
	Terrorists are criminals, and therefore ordinary criminal justice and security provisions should, as far as possible, continue to be the preferred way of countering terrorism.
	We strongly agree. Surely the right way to deal with the situation is to seek prosecutions in the normal way. I note that the Home Secretary said in his statement that that was his preferred starting point.
	It has been possible to achieve that in some cases. In January 2002, two Algerians were charged with membership of al-Qaeda, and although the case was dropped, a year later they were jailed for 11 years. We know that that can be done, so the critical questions are these: why cannot we do that on more occasions, and why is the Home Secretary ruling it out so clearly at this stage? In part, that hinges on concerns about whether one reveals sources, and the protection that one wants to give them. However, I note from the Home Secretary's remarks that he believes that prosecution probably would not be effective in securing a conviction in relation to the existing cases. That may be so, but we should not rule it out on that basis; surely we should also be legislating for future cases, for which we should legislate to allow intercept to be used.
	There must be a way forward in achieving more prosecutions. The Law Commission agrees, as does, interestingly, the new chief of police, Sir Ian Blair. He said:
	I have long been in favour of intercept evidence being used in court. The court can then weigh it up. At the moment nobody can test it.
	There are models throughout Europe; individual countries have found a way to get prosecutions and achieve a proper court process. So what are MI6 and GCHQ telling the Home Secretary that is making him so nervous about allowing that? If there is nervousness about the kind of information that is allowed in court, why are the Government not looking into alternative ways in which we could set up the court process? For example, what about specially trained and security cleared judges, who could prepare a case that could then be heard by a different judge? What about smaller juries, or special security cleared juries? Orand I do not like this, but if it is a way forward, perhaps we could look into ita jury could hear the evidence, but not have the source material that it has come from. The Government should try to find a way forward on this important principle, so that we can get more prosecutions, as we did in the past.
	I come on to two further issues that concern new offences and relate to ideas that the Government appear to have rejected. The first is the ideaagain, used in several European countriesof making planning for terrorist activity an aggravating factor when sentencing, by allowing courts to pass longer sentences for non-terrorist crimes where there is clear evidence that the offender intended to go on to commit an act of terrorism. In essence, if it can be proved that some terrorism is attached to a criminal activity, a longer sentence can be obtained. Why have the Government rejected that as a model?
	Why have the Government rejected the idea of introducing new offences to deal with loopholes that mean that an individual could be preparing for a terrorist attack that is not covered by legislation elsewhere? We argue that both those proposals should be included in discussions and may be a way forward.
	Let me deal with the Government's final suggestion of deportation. I greatly welcome the Home Secretary's announcement that Ministers have spent some time visiting countries to ascertain whether they can gain agreement on improvements in human rights. All parties welcome that. It should be everyone's long-term objective to try to ensure that individuals are free to go back to countries because their human rights record had improved. However, I would be worried if the Government introduced deportation on the basis of flimsy agreements on a ministerial visit when a memorandum had been signed. That is not good enough and would not persuade us that a robust system was in place to test whether the human rights record had improved sufficiently to allow deportation.
	The Government know that, if the system were not sufficiently robust, the detainees could test it in the courts. We make the simple suggestion of legally binding framework agreements with the relevant countries that are pre-tested in the courts to ascertain whether they are robust enough. Until those agreements are in place, no deportation should happen.

Mark Oaten: I do not know the arrangements and I would be nervous about assuming that simply because another EU member state had sent an individual back to a country, we could tick the box for this country. I want to ensure that we have gone through the process properly. Other arrangements exist, but I want them to be of such a high standard that this country would be happy to sign them. We cannot assume that it is safe to send individuals back simply because other countries have done that.
	It is difficult to summarise such a complex issue in 20 minutes. We believe that we should seek a cross-party consensus on such matters. The leaders of the two main Opposition parties will see the Prime Minister about the issue and I hope that we can consequently make some progress. However, time is against us. We are required to renew the derogation in March. As things stand, the Liberal Democrats will vote against it. The Government have had threenearly fouryears to resolve those issues and progress has been too slow.
	We want a balance between security and the important principles of justice. I hope that progress can be made but the Government's proposals so far fail to achieve the balance. In many ways, they make a bad position worse by continuing to undermine the strong principles of justice that have served this country so well for many years.

Tim Boswell: Is not this the dilemma that the Minister faces? If the detention orders apply to only a handful of foreign nationals for the reasons she has given and if the terrorism threat is much more extensive to this countryfor the purposes of the debate, we must accept that it isit seems almost paradoxical to say that the existence of those powers, confined to foreign nationals, is in any way sufficient or appropriate to meet the threat that the country faces. It seems to be partial because it is discriminatory. If she argues that only a few people are involved, that in a way weakens the case that she has to make. I expose that as a dilemma without necessarily resolving it.

Jeremy Corbyn: I was one of those who did not support the legislation when it was first proposed, not because I want there to be any terrorist outragesquite the oppositebut because I want a process of law, not of Executive detention. The Minister must address whether it is right, in a democracy, for a Government to take on themselves powers to detain people without charge, and without knowledge of the evidence against them, indefinitely in the case of foreign nationals. The response to the Law Lords' judgment must be that we accept the point of an independent judicial systemindependent of the political process.

Hazel Blears: Yes, I shall come to those points. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) pointed out in her intervention, we want rigorous independent judicial scrutiny of the proposed powers, but I shall come to those.
	The proposals for control orders therefore address the issues highlighted by the House of Lords head-on: in relation to proportionality, as we will have a tailored suite of measures; and in relation to discrimination, as they will apply to British citizens as well as foreign nationals. They will apply regardless of the type of terrorism in which people are involved. The proposed restrictions will range from not associating with certain people to not having access to the internet or mobile phones, notification as to an individual's whereabouts and not visiting particular premises or areas. The Home Secretary has made it clear that the decision to make a control order would not be taken lightly and, rightly, would not be unfettered. Safeguards are important, and will include independent judicial oversight of the Home Secretary's decision to make or vary a control order. In addition to the right of appeal immediately against the order, there will be regular independent reviews, not just of the fact that the order has been made but of any conditions attached. Circumstances might change, so different conditions might be appropriate at different times.
	The hon. Member for Winchester referred to the revocation of the certificate in relation to C, asking whether, one day, this person was a huge threat to the security of the nation, and the next day, he was not. I shall not comment on his individual case, but circumstances might well change and people's networks of contacts might get degraded through disruption by police operations, so there might no longer be a need for the most rigorous conditions in a control order. It is right that one should be allowed to apply to vary and change the conditions envisaged in the control order at that time.

Hazel Blears: We are conscious of those arguments, and we have learned from the experience of trying to deal with terrorism over many years. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would accept, however, that some individuals are committed to taking action that would strike at the very heart and fabric of the values that we hold dear in our democracy. They are out there. How do we strike a balance and operate a system that enables us to contain the threat against this country and, at the same time, maximise the rule of law?
	We must try to ensure that we comply as much as we can but, at the same, we recognise that there are circumstances in which there is not sufficient admissible evidence. If evidence were used, it could reveal the techniques and capabilities of the Security Service to the detriment of our ability to thwart and disrupt terrorists of that nature. That is an extremely difficult balance to strike. I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is in danger of painting a black-and-white picture: either we let everyone out or we lock everyone up; either or we comply with the rule of law or we completely abrogate it. There is a shade and a spectrumwe can seek to maximise our compliance with the rule of law while at the same time providing a rigorous framework that protects this country.

Alan Beith: Surely the Minister appreciates that there is a difference between oversight and judicial decision making. There would be no abrogating of the Home Secretary's responsibility for security if he initiated a process in which the decision was made judicially and not as part of a lengthy, subsequent review. There is surely room for the Government to move and recognise that most of the public would be much happier if the decision were in the hands of the judiciary and the Home Secretary merely initiated the process.

Simon Hughes: The Minister has admitted that this is a really important matter. Would it not be far more acceptable, and better meet the Home Secretary's objectives, if the police were able to arrest someone if they believed that they were conspiring to commit an offence related to terrorism? That is what happens now and as long as the police officer has a reasonable suspicion, it is not necessary to go to the courts every time the police want to arrest someone. Why cannot we have the same process, which would be open to judicial oversight if the police overstepped the mark?

Hazel Blears: I understand the hon. Gentleman's point, but I have already said that I am not in a position to provide a final view on the matter. The debate about the right process will continue. My main point is about who initiates and who makes the orders, and we seem to take different views on that. We are happy to discuss these matters as the debate develops on how the process should work.
	I want to explain our approach more fully. It has been said several times that the most appropriate way to proceed is to prosecute. I want to put on record the fact that we absolutely share that view. Whenever we can, we want to prosecute, bring people to trial, adduce the evidence and let the court decide. It is only when we cannot prosecute because parts of the evidence are inadmissible or would reveal the capabilities of the Security Service that we find ourselves in the position of requiring some mechanism and machinery to enable us to protect the people of this country through a series of orders, while at the same time ensuring that we comply with the rule of law as much as possible. We always prefer to prosecute when we can. A number of prosecutions have already been launched and hon. Members may be aware of the comments of the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who expressed his frustration at how little detail we have been able to provide because these matters are sub judice. The public does not know the extent of the arrests, operations and work that has been carried out in order to bring people to trial. Prosecuting is, as I said, always our preferred option.
	Some people are highly exercised about why we decided not to allow intercept to be used as evidence. It is right for me to provide hon. Members with some of our detailed thoughts on that matter. First, it is not a magic bullet. We have said time and again that the review examined whether we would be able to bring more serious criminals and terrorists to trial if we used intercept as evidence. The review found that that would not be the case and it examined the cases of individual detainees. As I understand it, it would not have been possible to bring any of those cases to a formal trial by using intercept evidence.
	This country has a unique system of co-operation between our intelligence agencies and the police. It does not exist in many other countries. The sharing of intelligence product with our law enforcement agencies is second to none and there is a genuine worry that if we were to allow intercept to be used as evidence, that unique and close working relationship could be jeopardised. Some of the intelligence product might not be able to be shared with law enforcement in any case. I would be seriously concerned if the excellent disruptive work that currently takes place were to be put at risk because intelligence agencies felt it impossible to share their intelligence product with the police service. Indeed, if we allowed that to happen, as some have proposed, we would be taking a retrograde step. Once again, these are matters of fine balance and our decision is that, on balance, the benefits do not outweigh the costs at this time.

Hazel Blears: The right hon. Gentleman may find the arguments unpersuasive, but I find them quite persuasive as they are put to me at the moment. Clearly, we all have to make our own judgment about where the balance is drawn. We have a unique system of very close co-operation, and I am worried that we would jeopardise it if we used intercept as evidence. Secondly, we have an adversarial legal system, in which the defence has the right of full disclosure. If the security services were to use those parts of intercept that supported their case, they could be accused of cherry picking the evidence. Quite rightly, the defence would seek to follow the whole chain of events in respect of the intercept that had been obtained.
	Our adversarial system complies with the European convention on human rights and contains a number of hurdles that make it very difficult to use intercept as evidence. Moreover, technology is changing very fast indeed. We have been working to develop a legal model containing a system of checks and balances that would enable us to use intercept as both intelligence and evidence. However, the speed of technological change means that any model that we might develop would not be robust enough to interact with our legal system.
	Other hon. Members have asked whether public interest immunity certificates would suffice to enable us to keep sensitive information about the security services' capabilities outwith disclosure. Again, the risk is that the courts would not support the PII certificate. If that happens, a capability that is disclosed is disclosed for all time. That is a major difficulty with using intercepted evidence.
	I am not saying that the Government will not keep under review a matter that has been reviewed five times in the past 10 years. On each occasion, it was decided that intercepted evidence should not be used. I appreciate that people argue the other side of the case firmly, but the Government are not convinced that intercepted evidence could be used to fight terrorism more effectively than is the case at present.

Jeremy Corbyn: As a former Minister, the right hon. Gentleman is aware that the Foreign Office monitors human rights issues in all countries and that the Home Office has its own internal system, although I believe that it is slightly different. Is he satisfied that if someone is deported to Algeriathere are plenty of other examplesthey will not be subject to abuse or executive detention, not necessarily on arrival, but later, which may be why they left that country in the first place?

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman raised a good point, and it is the sort of matter that the Minister would have to address in the memorandum of understanding. I do not agree with the hon. Member for Winchester that there has to be a legal framework, because a memorandum of understanding can be binding between countries. It should address torture and execution, which are the two primary issues, but also executive detention. A judgment must be made, and it will be a better judgment than the one we have had so far.
	I want to read some extracts from the minority opinion of Lord Hoffmann, who made some pertinent points that go to the core of the issue. He said:
	This is one of the most important cases which the House has had to decide in recent years. It calls into question the very existence of an ancient liberty of which this country has until now been very proud: freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention. The power which the Home Secretary seeks to uphold is a power to detain people indefinitely without charge or trial. Nothing could be more antithetical to the instincts and traditions of the people of the United Kingdom.
	As I develop my argument, I shall explain how the Government's proposal still falls within the description of the old system.
	What Lord Hoffmann went on to say is important in the context of the Minister's reasonable comments about a state of emergency. He said:
	This is a nation which has been tested in adversity, which has survived physical destruction and catastrophic loss of life. I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups of terrorists to kill and destroy, but they do not threaten the life of the nation. Whether we would survive Hitler hung in the balance, but there is no doubt that we shall survive Al-Qaeda. The Spanish people have not said that what happened in Madrid, hideous crime as it was, threatened the life of their nation. Their legendary pride would not allow it. Terrorist violence, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community.
	In conclusion, he said:
	The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory.
	I would not have chosen that phrasing, but Lord Hoffmann is saying that terrorists may destroy our buildings and our lives, but without our help they cannot destroy our way of life. That is what this debate is about today.

David Davis: I take the hon. Gentleman's point. I support the thrust of the argument urged by his party today. He will not be surprised to hear that I would have phrased it in terms not of the ECHR but of our fundamental rights, which are of longer standing. Let us consider how the Government can deal with the matter in a way that meets the fundamental rights about which I am concerned and the concerns that he is expressing.
	Although I realise that there is a good reason why the Home Secretary cannot be in the Chamber today, I am sorry that he is not here, as I was going to tease him slightly. When he and I first knew each other more than 30 years ago in the 1960s the most fashionable writers were revolutionary left-wing writers, such as Guevara and Frantz Fanon. Some of the writers that the Home Secretary would have read made it clear that one of the main aims of revolutionary terrorist acts is to provoke a reactionary response from the state, to recruit new people to their cause. We must bear that in mind when addressing these issues so that we do not inadvertently do what the terrorists want us to doin effect, that is what Lord Hoffmann was talking about.
	The Home Secretary's proposed actions may not only be in breach of hundreds of years of our ancient British liberties, they may also be counter-productive. I do not normally quote Frenchmen, but in the words of Talleyrand this is, in terms of the war against terror,
	worse than a crime, it is a mistake.
	That is the risk we face. As I said about house arrest, when the Home Secretary made his statement to the House on the matter, he may lock up one known terrorist but he will create 10 unknown terrorists. Although house arrest is marginally less draconian than being in prison, the irony is that it may act as a stronger recruiting agent because it is in the middle of the community from which the person comes.
	I am not the only person who takes that viewthe most eminent ally I have found over the past few days was the chairman of the Bar Council, who said:
	Disproportionate measures risk radicalising the community from which a detainee comes. That may make this country less rather than more safe.
	It is important that we keep that in mind.

David Davis: I start further back than my right hon. and learned Friend. First, I do not like the idea of the Executive taking such decisions. Even under the current procedure, people have been in prison for three years, and perhaps longer in one casewe do not knowso I do not like it from that point of view. I do not like the state taking those decisions into its own hands. As I am about to explain, I also think that the standards applied on questions not only of law but of fact are very important. That is where the primary criticism of SIAC lies in my judgment.
	After all, the purpose of the Newton committee, which was set up at the beginning of the process when the 2001 Act first came into effect, was to assess how the legislation was working and to ensure that the House received a report on its operation. At the beginning, as the hon. and learned Lady made clear in her intervention, many people did not quite know how the system would work, but they wanted to try to make it work. They were very good, high-quality people, but they have reached the conclusion, as Newton did, that the system is not working well.
	Let us bear in mind the fact that the Newton committee included several ex-Cabinet Ministers and ex-Ministers who had responsibility for security in Northern Irelandnot people who would normally be viewed as a pushover for the civil liberties lobby. They reached a series of conclusions and a number of principled objections to the operation of detention established by the 2001 Act. Essentially, the committee noted that the suspects faced no specific charge and were not presented with, and given the opportunity to refute, all the evidence against them. It reached the judgment that that increases the risk of a miscarriage of justicethe point that came up in the Liberal spokesman's comments.
	The report also suggested that that risk is compounded by certain features of the certification and adjudication process. For examplein my view, this is almost the most important thing at the centre of the issuethe standard of proof involved in the SIAC procedure is reasonable belief and suspicion. That is an incredibly low standard of proof on which to undertake the incarceration of certainly a citizen of this country, but frankly, anyone. Let us understand that point. We talk about the terrorist destroying lives, but incarceration is a way of destroying a life, too. Such people cannot work or do anything, frankly. Even if people are incarcerated in their own homes, it still involves the destruction of the life that they have a right to expect if they are innocent.
	In addition, the current SIAC rules do not oblige the Home Secretary to reveal all the material that could help the suspect, even in summary form. Sometimes, the vast majority of a case is closed, so the open case might be an unreliable indication of the basis of the closed case. The report also noted that detention under part 4 can be for an indefinite periodone of the more Kafkaesque aspects of the current system.
	The problem with the Minister's inability to reply to the hon. and learned Member for Medway is that, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) points out, we must assume for the moment at least that the same approaches, criticisms and concerns will apply to the review process that will follow on from executive detention or control orders in the looser sense. In my view, that is, frankly, unacceptable. It is not consistent with the long-term liberties of British subjects, and as I have said already, it may be counter-productive.

Mark Oaten: Is not the other problem with the point made by the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) that although the Home Secretary initially said that he thought that control orders would be rarely handed out, he gave media interviews in which he said that they might have to be handed out to relatives, friends and associates? We might not be dealing with a limited number of control orders, but a large number.

David Davis: That is true. The simple fact of the matter is that the House could not pass a law on the presumption that it would apply to only one or two people. It must use the presumption that a law will be used to its maximum. If we look back at the case that the hon. Gentleman raised, I recall that the evidence had not changed but was found to be too weak to sustain the case against the individual. It is implicit in that that a person was locked up wrongly for three years. If only one person is locked up wrongly, let alone hundreds, it is too many.
	The Newton committee made several proposals, two of which stand out in the context of today's debate as offering the Government a way forward. It recommends developing a body of counter-terrorist law that is specific to the problem that we face, but capable of being enforced without compromising our criminal justice system. I agree with that, and the Liberal Democrats' proposal was in part a development of it. However, I got the impression that the structure could be wider than that, and if we hear from the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), a member of the Newton committee, he might clarify that point. I thought that the committee had in mind a complete body of law applying to terrorist offences that would be part of the criminal law, but separate from it. For example, when the American authorities had trouble securing effective prosecutions against gangsterism and racketeering in north America, they introduced the RICORacketeer Influenced and Corrupt OrganisationsAct. Perhaps such an approach should be considered for terrorist offences.
	The most important suggestion made by the Newton committee was the proposal to render terrorist suspects capable of being brought to trial under the normal British system of justice. It suggested that intercept evidence should be allowed in court, and proposed I thought that this was the most important aspectthat an investigating judge who was different from the trial judge should sift the sensitive evidence.
	The presumption so far seems to have been that such evidence would be only intercept evidence, but the proposal was for assessing and checking sensitive evidenceintercept and all other intelligence-based evidencebefore presenting it to the court in a way that protected the intelligence source, human or technical, and at the same time protected the rights of the defendant.
	The Minister spoke about public interest immunity certificates. I am not a fan of them. When I have been asked to sign a certificate, I have refused because I have taken the view that they were being used to avoid embarrassment for the Department concerned rather than pursuing justice. Given the Minister's concern about PII certificates and the right of a judge to overrule them, it is the area where the Government's focus should be sharpest, because it is where we have the greatest opportunity for advancing the case for the possibility of prosecuting terrorists while at the same time protecting our services.
	I talked privately to the Home Secretary about the matter and, as far as I can without giving away any confidences, I will replicate that conversation. The Home Secretary said, as the Minister has said, that it may not even be primarily intercept evidence that is involved in tracking down suspected terrorists and determining who they are. Let me put the most difficult case and see how we can pursue it under the Newton rules. Let us assume that the data are not intercept data but from an informer whose life might be at risk in a terrorist organisation and who is so nervous that he will not even meet the investigating judge to be interviewed. What will happen to that person if they are not put under house arrest?
	The first thing that we must understand is that if the person concerned is a threat to the state and to our citizens, they will be under the most intensive surveillancewhat the agencies delicately call technical attack: bugging, video surveillance, human surveillance, intercepts of mobile, landline and satellite telephones, and of e-mails and bank accounts, and the tracking of vehicles. There is a vast range of facilities available to the security services.
	If at the end of that process there is no evidence, we are talking about locking somebody up as a result of an uncorroborated comment from an informer who might be an enemy, might be in political opposition to the person, might have been bribed or might merely hate the person. Either one can develop the evidence and determine that the person is a terrorist or one cannot. Given the intensive nature of the surveillance that will be ranged against somebody who is a serious threat to the state, it is untenable that a case could not be built even if the original data that allowed the individual to be targeted were not used.

Simon Hughes: The countries on mainland Europe that use such a system do so because they have an inquisitorial tradition, where it is acceptable to have an examination by somebody competent to filter out the evidence that can go to stage two. Such a change might require us to alter our mindset and do some jobs not adversarially but by an inquisition. I and my colleagues are up for that because it preserves a proper legal process and ensures that sources are protected where necessary.

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. He probably understands how big a jump it is for me to go to a continental inquisitorial system from the normal adversarial systems that I prefer. The simple fact is that the judge, who will presumably be a specialist in the area, would be duty-bound by the requirement not only to protect absolutely the lives and technical sources of the security services, but to ensure that the defence is not prejudiced in the evidence presented to the court in summary or in total. That seems to me to be a perfectly acceptable system. It will be of a higher quality and in the long run be more effective than our present system and it will be entirely defensible to the communities that might otherwise be radicalised by inappropriate measures.

David Davis: My hon. Friend puts the argument better than I could. We are, in effect, discussing sending someone down on the uncorroborated say-so of a single informant. I defer to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham, but I spent about nine of 13 years dealing with the agencies involved in this issue and they were very clear in their mind that the people they dealt with did not always demonstrate the most saintly calibre in providing information. The agencies had to corroborate the information that they gavea matter with which the House has become all too familiar in the past year.

David Davis: The process would allow more information to be released to the courtnot to the defencebecause, to be frank, it would not allow a fishing expedition to be conducted into the totality of the intelligence agencies' data. As things stand, a defence lawyer would be able to say, reasonably, We have been given only half the evidence. Now, I need to see the other half. Our aim is to ensure that the balance is maintained.
	The second difficult case that I wish to put relates to the Liberal Democrats' proposals for milder methodsusing tagging and other sorts of control order. I gave the matter extensive thought in the weekend following the Home Secretary's statement. I started from the presumption that whichever standard of proof was applied to the Government's proposal of house arrest would be applied to control ordersin effect, suspicion. That is a concession in terms of our law and our fundamental liberties.
	I then thought what advantage would arise from the Liberal Democrats' proposed method. Tagging is clearly a valuable technique in dealing with criminals. I suspect that the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety knows more than most about it. Criminals tend to come from a community and to have family in the country, so if they break their tag, they will be found again at some point and go to jail. However, the first thing that a terrorist whose only connections in this country are those of a terrorist network will do when he or she is tagged is cut the tag and vanish. A proposal that appears to provide greater security but, in fact, does not and that sacrifices normal standards of proof as well is dangerous.

Mark Oaten: As we are all trying to be helpful to each other, let me be helpful to the right hon. Gentleman. If we ran out of time and could not reach an alternative before the derogation was required, one of the things on which we would wish to engage with the Government would be seeking not an annual derogation, but some sort of ring-fenced period for the derogation on the understanding that we would seek an agreement before the derogation was allowed to continue.

Jeremy Corbyn: I am listening carefully to what my hon. Friend is saying. In the light of this threat, how does he justify the detention of people without trial and without knowledge of the charges against them, given that there is a danger that they have been incarcerated on evidence that would not stand up in court, which leads to the self-serving belief that the guilty are being held in jail when they may well be innocent? That is a much greater threat than that which exists at present.

Jeremy Corbyn: My point, which perhaps I did not make very clearly, is that security services information can be wholly inaccurate. It can be based on people pursuing a vendetta against somebody else in a particular community, and then becomes very dangerous when it gets a life of its own based on a fundamental inaccuracy. I am not suggesting that Ministers go around perversely saying, I want to imprison X, Y or Z, but they might be advised that there is evidence against that person that ends up with their imprisonment.

Tom Harris: Of course I shall give way but I note before I do so that the hon. Gentleman refused to give way to me twice. However, I shall show him the courtesy that he denied me.

Tom Harris: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has thrown his rattle out of the pram. If he had not interrupted me, I would have got around to a more in-depth analysis of his comments.
	I began by saying that people in this country will say either that there is no threat and the measures are unnecessary or, as I do, that there is a huge threat and they are necessary. The Liberal Democrats unsurprisingly say both. They claim that there is a threat but that we need to devise new measures. What measures? They spoke about the balance between security and civil liberties. It seems to me that they strike that balance much more at the civil liberties end. That is understandable, given the traditions of the Liberal party. There is nothing dishonourable in that position but I have the right to say that, if their proposals were implemented, it would have a negative effect on security. That is my position.

Patrick Mercer: If I understand the hon. Gentleman correctly, he is suggesting an extremely hard line to protect this country by taking measures that some would view as illiberal at the same time as the Government suggest that individuals who had been suspected of terrorism should be returned to this country and put at liberty.

Tom Harris: Indeed. I have no problem with that. I am prepared to stand up here and argue my corner. Let us have a vote on this, and we shall see whose view prevails.
	The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden said that a suspect's right to a trial and to know the charges against them were fundamental. He said that they were the fundamental rights of a free citizen in this country. Well, he was half right. Those rights are fundamental. People have the right to a fair trial and to know the charges against them, but another right has much greater priority: a far more fundamental right is the right to life.
	Occasionally, I have been a tad unfair in this House to those who have had a legal trainingI do not include myself in that number. I hope that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) will forgive me for saying this: she and I served on the Standing Committee for the Proceeds of Crime Billwe sat through 39 sittingsand that was the first time that I had experienced this lawyerly culture. The Proceeds of Crime Bill was designed to allow the Assets Recovery Agency to confiscate such proceeds from people who had not been found guilty of anything in a criminal court, through a civil procedure based on the balance of evidence. That was the fundamental point of that Bill, and it was fought against root and branch by the Liberals and the Conservative party on that particular legal point.
	It was claimed by those with legal training that it was unfair for the Assets Recovery Agency to confiscate anything from someone who had not been proven guilty in a court of law. Perhaps they were right; perhaps they were wrong. I certainly had no problem in supporting those measures, and today the Assets Recovery Agencyin Scotland the Crown Officeis confiscating millions of pounds a week from drug dealers who have not been found guilty in court. We do not have enough evidence to convict them, but nevertheless we are confiscating their homes and cars. We are freezing their bank accounts and taking money from them, then distributing it in the communities that their activities have most damaged.
	Lawyers among us may say that that process is not particularly fair, just as they are making the same arguments today. If the priority of the Government is to safeguard the lives of our citizens and the fabric of the nation, arguments about due process are the equivalent of arguing about the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin.

Tom Harris: I am sure that the many dozens of people watching the debate live on television will reach their own conclusions based on what the hon. Gentleman just said.
	I want to address the issue of wire tap or intercept evidence. I was extremely concerned when the Government announced last year that they were considering the possibility of allowing wire tap evidence in court. The security services were extremely concerned that a crucial source of counter-terrorist information would dry up if wire tap evidence were permissible in court. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden legitimately pointed out that many other countries, including some of our closest allies, allow intercept evidence in court.
	Let us look at the American example. In many states in America where wire tap is allowed, that source of information has all but dried up because criminalsmembers of the mafia and terroristsunderstand that things that they say on the telephone will inevitably be used against them in court, and are extremely careful not to say anything on the telephone. That is exactly why, I am glad, the Government have been very reluctant to conclude that the law should change.

Tom Harris: One of the most unhelpful aspects of the wire tap evidence debate is that it has become so high-profile that what the hon. Gentleman says is probably half right. I would have preferred it if this debate about wire tap intercept evidence had a lower profile. I remain firmly of the belief, however, as do the security services, that admitting that type of evidence in court will do nothing to increase the number of convictions, and will result in information that the security services currently use to avoid terrorist atrocities no longer being available. That is a very important point. I firmly believe that terrorist attacks of the order of Madrid, Istanbul, Bali or even 11 September in New York and Washington have already been avoided in this country thanks to the measures introduced in the 2001 Act. I believe that all the 12 people in Belmarsh were involved in conspiring in some kind of terrorist activity, and at least some of them would by now have carried out attacks on this country.
	Given that wire tap evidence is not admissibleand should not be admissible in my viewwhat should the Home Secretary do when confronted with evidence that a particular individual poses a genuine threat to this country? Should he say, We don't have enough evidence to convict him in court, so let him go free? Then, 12 months later, when we have an attack on the London underground or anywhere in the country, the Home Secretary could turn around and say, Well, it could have been worse. We could have locked him up without trial. That seems to be the position of some Opposition Members, and people who are paying attention to this debate will find that incredible.
	The people we are facingthe terrorists who hate our country and culture so muchare willing to risk everything: their possessions, their friends their family, their lives. It is quite acceptable, and incumbent on us, to realise that in return we should accept a sacrifice. If that sacrifice compromises the level of civil liberties that we enjoy, that is what must happen. The Government are sometimes guilty of claiming that these measures do not represent any kind of compromise on our civil liberties. We must be honest and say that they do. That is what happens when we are in a fight against this kind of terrorismwe compromise our civil liberties, because the alternative does not bear thinking about. There is no point claiming that we have the same civil liberties today as we did three years ago, and neither should we have.
	The hon. Member for Winchester said that the Government were given leeway for three years, following the passage of the 2001 Act. The mood to give the Government leeway, howeverI presume that he means the derogation from the European conventionhas disappeared. He should admit that the reason that that mood has disappearedI agree that it hasis that we have not suffered that kind of terrorist atrocity in the past three years. Some argue, such as the New Statesman last weeka magazine to which I am ashamed to be a subscriberthat because there has been no terrorist attack on Britain in the past three years, the threat does not exist and we should not bother with any kind of framework for preventing terrorism. The fact that there has not been a successful attack on British soil does not mean that the threat does not existit means that the security services have been successful in preventing an attack. No one looking at the events of 9/11, Madrid, Bali and Istanbul could conclude that there is not a threat. That does not make sense. Instead of assuming that a threat does not existmy comments are not directed at the hon. Member for Winchesterthe editor of the New Statesman should run a feature next week paying tribute to the work of the security services, which have saved God knows how many lives as a result of their intelligence work.
	In conclusion, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden repeated something that is often said in this debate. He said that by compromising our civil liberties we are giving some kind of victory to the terrorists changing our way of life and giving up some of our freedoms is a victory for terrorism. No, it is not. [Interruption.] I am not speaking on behalf of the Home SecretaryI am expressing my own opinion. There would be a victory for terrorism if a massive bomb went off in a crowded location in one of our capital cities or in any other city. There would be a victory for terrorists if a jumbo jet crashed into the Palace or any other location in the country. Terrorism can be defeated by political, military and intelligence means. Claiming that we would give terrorists the final victory if we denied people held in Belmarsh a trial may receive a round of applause on Any Questions?, but it does not sit right with the vast majority of my constituents or, I suspect, the constituents of other hon. Members.

Alan Beith: The hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Harris) has invented a category of peoplenone of them have attended today's debatewho do not believe that there is a serious terrorist threat to this country. I have heard no such person speak today, and I have more reason than anyone else in the Chamber to be aware of the extent to which the work of our security and intelligence services has preserved us from major terrorist actions over a considerable period. My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) made that point in opening the debate, and we all join together in paying tribute to their work. However, that does not absolve us from the need to examine the legislation and see whether it is right, whether it serves its purpose, whether it deals with the full range of threats and whether it is sustainable over a period of time.
	The key phrase in the legislation is about the nature of the threat as a
	public emergency threatening the life of the nation.
	The threat that faces us is not short term, and we cannot envisage its early cessation. Indeed, it is difficult to envisage the circumstances in which the loose al-Qaeda network and other groups loosely connected with it would want to desist from their terrorist activity. We cannot act, therefore, on the basis of emergency short-term legislation such as regulation 18B, which was used in the second world war. I was only a baby at the time, but people knew that the war would be over in two or three years, and that we would either win or lose it. We do not know when the present terrorist threat will end, so we need sustainable legislation. There are not many Members in the Chamber, with the possible exception of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Harris), who believe that the legislation that the Lords recently challenged and effectively overruled is sustainable. There is a widespread view that we cannot maintain a system of indefinite detention without trial on a ministerial decision. The Government clearly now accept that view, and are working on that basis to devise alternative proposals.
	I served as deputy chairman of the Newton committee, but I did not have to work very hard in that capacity, as the committee was well chaired by Lord Newton and we were well supported by the group of senior Members, Privy Councillors of all parties, and one who had no political affiliation. It was wide ranging in its experience and there was no fundamental disagreement over the conclusions that were reached. I give away no secrets when I say that the only subject on which we had real difficulty reaching an agreed wording was what we debated last nightincitement to religious hatred and how far legislation should go in attempting to deal with it. There was relatively little difficulty in reaching agreement on the matters that we are debating today and what we should propose to the Government.
	We found many other things wrong with the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. The Newton committee was set up because the 2001 legislation was rushed through both Houses of Parliament on the basis that its purpose was to deal with a short-term emergency. In fact, it was stuffed with measures that had nothing to do with short-term needs and nothing to do with terrorism, which further inhibited the ability of the two Houses to get it right at the time. The committee was set up because it became clear that the measure could not be passed through the other place unless some concession were made. The concession was steadily tightened up: first, it was a review committee, then a review committee whose report had to be debated in both Houses, then a committee whose report would, if it were not debated, lead to the entire lapse of the legislation. That reflected the degree of concern felt in both Houses that, because of the immediate circumstances, they were being pressed to push through a measure that they were deeply unhappy about, which required much further and more detailed consideration.
	The one point of anger that I would like to express at this stage, before returning to the happy consensual atmosphere of the debate, is that the Government's initial response to the Newton report was misplaced macho posturing. Their initial reaction to the report seemed to suggest that none of the recommendations were of any value whatever and that the Government would carry on very much as they were. I realise that the present Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety took no part in that, but it set a tone for relative inaction over the next 12 months. The committee had proposed that the Government should prepare an alternative to the 2001 legislation, which would need to be renewed or replaced because the derogation would come up in just over a year's time and the legislation would lapse.
	I am pleased that things seem to have moved on, largely because of the House of Lords judgment and the coincidental change of Home Secretary, which has also helped. I very much welcome the way in which the present Home Secretary is approaching the matter. That is not to say that I disagreed in all respects with the previous Home Secretary. He made it pretty clear on the record that, in respect of an issue that we shall come to in a few moments, he would have welcomed the ability to use intercept evidence in court, but had to be satisfied that he could secure general agreement among the various Government bodies concerned. He certainly showed continuing interest in intercept and set up further consideration of it even before the Newton committee had raised it.
	The Newton package had two main aspects: making prosecution easier and more feasible, and proposing alternative measures where prosecution could not be pursued. The measures to make prosecution more practicable included new offences and offences that could be aggravated by connection with terrorism. The committee drew from experience in other countries and in other areas of law. One important aspect of pursuing prosecution was the idea of having a security-cleared investigating judge as part of the process and another was using intercept evidence.
	I continue to believe, as Newton recommended, that we should remove the blanket ban on the use of intercept evidence. The law should allow it, but that is not to say that it will solve either the existing Belmarsh cases or all the cases in the future. In many circumstances, it would be prejudicial to use it. The main purpose of intercept activity is the gathering of intelligence, which, as the Minister rightly said earlier, plays a valuable role in disruption. It is not collected on an evidential basis, but it is possible to collect it on that basis and use it in certain limited circumstances. We should not preclude it, because there may well be cases in the future where it would be both relevant and helpful. The present blanket ban is difficult to accept.
	In my two capacities, I am aware of at least five different reasons why various parts of the system are uncomfortable about the use of intercept evidence in this way. I am not certain about the current balance of opinion about which reason the Government regard as the most important. They are important reasons, but in my opinion, none outweighs the benefits stemming from limited availability of the intercept option. It should be part of the package.
	On the other side of the page, as it were, the committee proposed a series of measures that have been echoed by both the Minister and the Conservative spokesman, although the latter questioned them in one respect. The measures deal with people about whom serious suspicions exist, but in respect of whom there is insufficient evidence to lead to a successful prosecution.
	The measures did not include house arrest, but did include restriction of movement. That was chosen because it allows potential links with other terrorist activists to be brokenlinks that could allow the person who would otherwise be detained to have a role in the preparation of further terrorist acts. The Government's proposals include many of the committee's proposed measures.
	However, the question then facing the committee has been raised several times in the debate. It is, What about UK citizens? That is one of the most difficult issues. When we asked Are there no UK citizens about whom similar suspicions are held?, we could not get a negative answer. That is, no one could say No, we have only ever come across foreigners about whom we have such suspicions.
	My judgment is that there are UK citizens about whom similar suspicions have been raised. They will have had to be dealt with in other ways, such as by prosecution for other offences, or by surveillance or preventive and disruptive activity of various kinds. There is therefore both an anti-discrimination argument and a practical argument against the use of measures exclusively against foreign citizens. The Government were really saying, We can get this little group under these measures, but not really anyone else by the use of even remotely similar measures.
	It must have been clear to everyone, as soon as the Lords' judgment was delivered, that we could not extend to UK citizens detention without trial on the decision of a Minister. That is so foreign to everything that we believe and acceptwith the possible exception of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcartthat there is no way that either House of Parliament could admit it into the range of anti-terrorism measures.
	It is all right for Members of Parliament or television commentators to say, This is an important thing that we have to do to fight terrorism. What about a Muslim who, by some happenstance of association, is threatened with executive detention without any due process? The whole picture is very different for a person like that. The same was true for quite a few Irish people, both in Northern Ireland and in Great Britain, when they were subject to other limitations. In their situation, matters looked rather different.
	It was essential to the basis of our civil liberties that other measures were found, and the committee felt that the Government should have been looking for measures appropriate for dealing with UK citizens about whom there was the suspicion of terrorist activity.
	In the interests of time, I shall turn now to my final pointthe key concern that we cannot be content with ministerial decision and subsequent judicial review, especially in respect of a process as hidebound as that of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. The reason is that the people concerned are unable to see the evidence against them. They cannot produce an alibi against a piece of evidence used in SIAC, because they do not know that it is alleged that, say, they attended a particular meeting on a particular day. Therefore, because they do not know the evidence involved, even the most cast-iron alibi cannot be used.
	My fundamental point is that making it possible for a Minister to lock up or otherwise restrict the liberty of a UK citizen because it is thought that that person might have terrorist associationseven though the evidence looks promisingwill not be acceptable in either House of Parliament.
	I therefore want to challenge an important statement that the Minister made. She said that, if this matter were to be given over to the judiciary, the Home Secretary would be abrogating his responsibility for the security of this country. That is not the case. We give the Home Secretary responsibilities to carry out, and he and the police have to bring people to court. He is not abrogating his responsibility for the safety of citizens against crime if he does not pick out a dangerous violent criminal or a repeated sex offender and say, We're not going to try you because I know you're guilty, so I'm going to put you in prison.
	That is not abrogating his responsibility. The Home Secretary allows the police to arrest a person and due process to take place. Therefore, it is no more true that he would be abrogating his responsibility if he ensured that it was a judicial decision and not an Executive decision that might lead even to the limitations that we have talked about today. Obviously, he or the police might initiate that processit could go as high as the Home Secretaryand he might be abrogating his responsibility if he ignored the repeated pleas to set the process in motion for an individual or group. However, he is erecting a false argumentand he cannot be guilty of the chargeby saying that he cannot give the responsibility to a judge because that would be failing the nation. He would be serving the nation, although judges might not want to be put in that position. However, the public would have much more confidence, and the legislation would be more sustainable, if a judicial and not an Executive decision were made to take away someone's liberty in circumstances where they had not been found guilty of anything, but there were reasonable grounds for suspecting that they may be about to do something very dangerous.
	We all recognise how difficult such decisions are, but we want a process in which the public and both Houses of Parliament can have confidence. We are starting a process that might lead us there within a reasonable period. I just wish that it had started when the Committee first reported.

Ross Cranston: I congratulate the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) on the measured way in which he made his proposals, although I do not accept all of them. The only blot was when he bracketed us with Burma and North Korea, which is simply incorrect.
	Much of the debate about this issue is simplistic. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Harris) said, it often equates Belmarsh with Guantanamo Bay, but they are entirely different. It also engages in rhetoric when the Government are accused of betraying human rights.
	My hon. Friend the Minister was absolutely right to start with the threat, which is the position taken by many of my constituents when I talk to them about it. They start with the threat demonstrated by 9/11, Spain, Bali and Istanbul. They also refer to what is, in my terms, the pre-enlightenment, anti-democrat, religious fanaticism under which this country is targeted. They also take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) that, at most, this country has detained only 17 people. The comparisons with other countries, such as France and so on, are often false because considerably more people are detained there, even though there is an investigating judge. I am not suggesting that we should react in a populist or utilitarian way. We should approach the issue pragmatically, but as a matter of principle. The Government's critics often approach the matter in absolutist terms and do not engage with the debate.
	The shadow Home Secretary started with Lord Hoffman and his account of individual rights, but that is only half the story. Too often these days, we focus exclusively on individual and human rights, but that fails to take account of the history of civil rights and liberties in this country. To put it crudely, in the 19th century, the struggle was for democratic institutions and for whole groups of people to vote, assemble and join associations of workers, so that everyone and not just an elite could benefit. We must take into account the fact that we have democratic institutions. We must also take into account the fact that when we talk about rights and liberties, we mean the rights and liberties of groups of people, not just individuals. The Labour party had difficulties with that during the 1930s when Sir Stafford Cripps said that the democratic legislature could overcome property rights. That was an unacceptable position. However, we have a democratic systema great achievement. It may be flawed, but accounts that state that we have an overpowering Executive are lazy and do not take account of reality.
	That 19th-century struggle was also about individual rights, which have of course been overlaid by the great human rights documents of the 20th centurythe universal declaration and regional documents such as the European convention on human rights and fundamental freedoms. In the 20th century, we had to reconcile democracy and individual human rights.
	The shadow Home Secretary spoke of the great harm caused to individuals by imprisonment. There is no doubt about that, but in our society we have always accepted that we can deliberately impose grave harm on individuals to lessen the risk to others we do that every day in the criminal courts; I do that when I send people to prison because it is done in accordance with certain fundamental principles. The human rights documents themselves accept that democracy and individual liberty have to be reconciled. For example, as we know, there are provisions whereby Governments can act in ways that are necessary for a democratic society, so rights have to give way to that.
	It is possible for democracy and human rights to be reconciled, but my main point is that we must take into account democratic institutions and the great 19th-century struggle, so that we have a system in which all can participate democratically. Instead of seeing democratic institutionsin this case, the Home Secretaryaccountable to Parliament as a blot on the system, we should applaud them. As we are debating a Liberal Democrat motion, I shall quote what Lord Carlile said recently in The Guardian:
	A great deal of rhetoric has surrounded this subject. The demonisation by some commentators of
	he referred to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), the former Home Secretary
	over the issue is totally contrary to my observation, occasionally at close quarters, of a Home Secretary giving honest primacy to national security and public safety.
	I certainly agree with those sentiments.
	How do we reconcile democratic institutions acting for the collective good with the human rights of individuals? There are three overarching principles. First, actions must be justified democratically, in Parliament and to the public. Secondly, we cannot put security concerns in an absolute and unqualified way, which accords with another principlethat of shared humanity, recognised in the Human Rights Act 1998. A corollary of that is that any response by the Government must be balanced and proportionate, and take individual rights into account. Thirdly, we must act in accordance with law. That does not mean that we must necessarily act in accordance with the way in which the ordinary criminal courts operate.
	In the article to which I referred earlier, Lord Carlile said, when talking about the steps that might be taken to address the problem of the Belmarsh judgment:
	The second step might be to develop a trial procedure that would ensure the protection of sensitive intelligence. This may mean thinking beyond the conventional reliance on jury trial.
	He went on to say that although he, as a criminal practitioner, believes fundamentally in trial by jury, in some cases that may have to give way. We do not necessarily need to have an adversarial system. The shadow Home Secretary said that it might be possible to have a two-judge process, whereby one judge screened the evidence before it went to court.
	I do not have time to comment on the Government proposals in detail. The Liberal Democrat suggestion about deportation is not sensible; that somehow we should have memorandums and framework agreements with other countries and not act until they are tested. We need also to think about creating new offences and a reformed judicial process. The control orders suggested by the Government also seem a sensible way forward.
	I do not believe in absolute solutions to such difficult questions. There are no easy answers, but I am right behind the Government in their attempt to grapple with these difficult issues.

Tim Boswell: I have no particular expertise to offer the House in relation to terrorism, and no legal qualification, but we all have a common duty to address the civil liberties of this country's subjects, as has been done eloquently in this debate. It has been generally accepted, with possible reservations, that we all know that there is a problem with terrorism, and it is possible to have slightly different interpretations about how best to deal with it.
	I commented in an intervention that only a handful of people at Belmarsh had been subject to detention orders, and I am very doubtful whether that covers the whole population of potential terroristsI think notso that would not be a sufficient reaction even if it were necessary. There is an argument for having terrorists out in the community where they can be surveyed and kept an eye on, but it is quite proper at least for the Home Secretary, who is a politically accountable officer, to consider whether detention should be part of the portfolio of measures that can be used against terrorism. I may have reservations about how to do that and the process, but it at least should be considered.
	In some matters, Back Benchers and loyal Opposition parties have to defer to and trust Ministers in relation to the conclusions that they reach, if only because more evidence is available to them than to those outside the loop. I certainly do not question Ministers' motives, and I welcome the tone of the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety in this debate. We are all trying to feel after an acceptable solution, but the fact that we start with that presumption of trust should not entitle us to give Ministers a blank cheque to do whatever they wish.
	Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), I am concerned that there is a risk that we might stimulate terrorism in the act of trying to overcome it. Beyond that, there is also the possibility of paying too high a price for any element of extra security that we may gain by taking certain actions. I have experienced the uncomfortable position of lobbying Ministers and getting them to lobby the Egyptian authorities in relation to one of my constituents who was detained for a very long time and eventually tried and convicted in Cairo, on evidence that would not have been acceptable to the House or to the British courts, for membership of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, and then being told by an Egyptian official, Well, you lock up people as well like that, don't you? I found that very uncomfortable.
	We should all remember that any action that we decide to takeeven if we take it for good reasonsis not cost-free to the citizen. I had the interesting and somewhat disconcerting experience exactly a month ago of being peremptorily stopped in my car and being searched by Ministry of Defence police in uniform under the provisions of the Terrorism Act 2000. All I hope in that matter is that they acted perfectly correctly, and that they were not acting on information relayed to them, and perhaps that their action was proportionate and targeted to the matter at handI had some doubts about thatbut that shows what can happen to any of us. That was a very trivial matter, and I am willing to pay that price, but of course the process on which Ministers' views were overturned by the Lords and that they are seeking in a sense to replicate with control orders would greatly increase the inconvenience to citizens.
	I must say, even as an amateur in the field of human rights, that I anticipated at the time of the initial emergency legislation when it was confined to foreign nationals, what would happen in the Lords three years later, when it was struck down on the grounds of partiality. Of course, the collective approach of Ministers has been to say the answer is to make whatever we come up with applicable to British nationals as well.
	I emphasise to Ministers that, even if they do not intend, for example, to use powers to lock up the shadow Cabinet on 1 AprilI notice that the Minister is responding with interest to that, but I am making a serious pointany redress by way of appeal would take place ex post facto by judicial reviewit would not be immediate. If there were a delay, it would not be cost-free. Of course, foreign nationals have been detained under the existing legislation, with all the horror involved, yet they have had no redress for some considerable time.
	Conservative Members have what my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition described as serious misgivings about the process. Given that there is a common objective, process is central to the debate. I read it that the Government object not to the concept of a trial and judicial process but to the malign consequences that might arise from that, such as damaging sources or risking individuals, and the possible inability to adduce certain kinds of evidence to the satisfaction of a court.
	I have taken some notice of the deliberations of the Newton committee of Privy Councillors of all parties, partly on the back of the extremely eloquent speech made by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), and also because Lord Newton was my first boss nearly 40 years agoI echo the accolades that have been paid to him. The committee made a careful effort to examine the possible constraints in the use of intercept evidence and the judicial process, and tried to find out whether they could be overcome. The Government should consider more carefully the possibility of preparing or filtering evidence through a judicial process before it is considered by a judge.
	If there is evidence out there, it must be considered by someone. We hope that it would be considered by a judge before any detention or serious constraint were contemplated. The alternative choice would be for a Minister to consider it, but I would prefer a judge to do that, given the right safeguards. Ministers must rememberas we all mustthat however high they might be, the law is above them. Frankly, the Government, to put it delicately, have not been blind to the real threat to our society, but they have evinced an authoritarian attitude. I find that rather distasteful, and it is one reason why I have signed up to the Conservative civil liberties group. It is important for hon. Members on both sides of the House to take such matters seriously and to witness to them. Ministers should not have a free run in this.
	Ministers, especially, should understand that there is no middle way between the right thing to do and authoritarianismthey must do the right thing. It would be much better to find a system that strives to achieve judicial results and goes on to punish wicked people for what they are doing wrong, but does not achieve that by extending the powers of individual Ministers. We need a measure of self-restraint. There must be a better way than allowing the Home Secretary to lock people up without giving us evidence that would stand up in court.

Vera Baird: I want both Front-Bench spokespersons to be able to deal with all points raised, so I shall be brief. However, whatever hon. Members do, they should not think that I am being brief because my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Harris) said everything that I would have said.
	Everyone agrees that prosecution is the game of choice. The Tories, however, have to accept that realistically there must be a fallback position in case prosecution is not practical. Their inquisitorial model does not help in the slightest. It would be difficult to graft it on to our system. We have never had an inquisitorial model. Although we have coroners, both sides are represented during proceedings, so there is an adversarial aspect there. What would happen if there were an appeal under such a model? Proceedings in the Court of Appeal would be adversarial, as would an appeal in the House of Lords, so the model would not slide into the existing system.
	The analysis of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) did not help us. He seemed to think that the calibre of a judge would somehow improve if the procedures were swapped. At present, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission gathers all the material, perhaps subject to public interest immunity certificates. However, no Minister would sign a PII certificate while knowing that it covered material of benefit to the defendant. SIAC in effect receives all relevant material, and then both sides get it, subject of course to the special advocate procedure. The Home Office gets it all and the defence in one way or another gets it all.
	The special advocate has to take his instructions first, which is very difficult, and then cannot speak once he has seen the material. When not in closed session, the procedure is ordinary. The defence barrister deals with all the open evidence, and then the special advocate deals with all the closed evidence and tries to attack it as best he can on the limited instructions that he has been able to receive. Key to that is that SIAC is well aware that the material has not been properly and thoroughly cross-examinedit is aware of the limitations.
	The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden argued that an inquisitorial judge might somehow be able to make up for the deficiencies that fall to the defence, but that is not correct. SIAC knows that the material has not been scrutinised as fully as it would have liked, and must take it on that basis. I know the judiciary involved with SIAC, and I am satisfied that they also adopt an extremely high standard, and I will be very surprised if they do not insist that the material satisfies them beyond reasonable doubt. Therefore, we must look, as everybody agrees, to prosecution, but we must do so within our own court system model.
	I make the serious suggestion that it would be prudent for the Home Secretary to send all the material about all these people to the Director of Public Prosecutions as quickly as possible to see whether the appropriate independent key professional can decide to prosecute all, one, none or any of them. That would clearly appear to be an independent decision based on the evidence which had nothing to do with the Home Secretary. That should be done straight away.
	The Home Secretary also has the power to order further investigation. That is an important point, because it is far from clear that there has been a thorough investigation with a view to prosecution. One sees press reports and one hears lawyers acting for the Belmarsh detainees saying clearly that the detainees have not even been interviewed. If there had been an investigation with a view to prosecution, they would have been interviewed. I am not suggesting that they would have confessed, but interviews can be extremely important. If that position is correctit comes from the mouths of lawyers whom I know well and who I cannot imagine are saying what is incorrectthere has not been an attempt properly to investigate with a view to prosecution in at least all the cases of the people in Belmarsh. That is crucial.
	If the DPP finds in given cases that he cannot prosecute, he should be asked whether any of the proposals of the Newton committee assist him in doing so. He should make recommendations about that. If, even with all the widening that Newton advocates, with independent scrutiny by the DPP, and given the procedures under the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which allow more hearsay and bad character to be considered, it is not possible to prosecute and we cannot deport all the people, we will have to fall back on some restraint. The Tories will have to accept that that is realistic, as they were ready to accept the point in debate on part 4 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. They must keep an open mind on that, as the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden said they would.
	The issue of control orderspossibly falling short of house arrestmay boil down to who comes first: the Home Secretary making a decision that is scrutinised by a judge, or the Home Secretary making an application and a judge conducting the initial scrutiny. I appreciate and understand why the Home Secretary thinks that the defence of the realm is a responsibility of the Executive and not of the court. I would prefer the first decision to be taken by the court, but if that is not the Home Secretary's view and in the end he and the Government find that incompatible with their responsibilities, my right hon. Friend has a duty entirely to shoulder the burden of safeguarding the defence of the realm. If it has to be that way round, and so long as there is an appeal that is automatic, immediate and covers all the facts, perhaps even such a suggestion could be acceptable.
	I have a strong sense that somewhere in one or other of the strands that we have debated today we will find a common answer. The very fact that we are debating this issue and seeking consensus on it means not that our values have been undermined but that we are determined that democracy will find a way.

David Heath: What a fine note on which to end the Back-Bench contributions. With perhaps one exception, I am grateful to all the right hon. and hon. Members who spoke in an excellent debate, which shines as an oasis of rationality in the turmoil and pre-electoral bombast in which we so often indulge.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) and the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety set the tone of the debate in seeking consensus and points on which we could agree on the appropriate responses to what we all acknowledge is an extremely serious problem and a difficult dilemma for any Government. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) continued in the same tone and I am grateful to him for his remarks. He identified some of the same problems that we do with the present position and, indeed, some of the same responses to it. He stated the problem clearly at the outset when he said that the balance we had to strike was between defence of life and defence of way of life.
	We have to consider the proposals before us and their deficiencies when measured against our norms of justice in terms of the standard of proof, reasonable belief and the rights of the accused to know the case against them, to argue the case and to be proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt. We would normally expect all those things of a judicial system in this country and we should surrender them only with great care.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) made a thoughtful speech, in which he brought to bear the knowledge that he has gleaned from and contributed to the Newton committee in his plea for sustainable legislation, which we have not had until now.
	The hon. and learned Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston) spoke of reconciling the different pressures on the Government and referred to three tests of actionthat it is justified, proportionate and in accordance with law. I cannot disagree with his scholarly analysis.
	The hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) made, as usual, a sensible and reasoned speech. We do indeed have to accept that there is a presumption of trust in the Minister and her colleagues. They are in possession of information that we do not have, so in some respects we have to trust their judgment of what is best. However, that does not remove from us the responsibility of questioning their judgment and testing it against the norms of a democratic society.
	The hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) brought the Back-Bench contributions to a fitting conclusion. She restated our primary point, that prosecution must be the preferred option. It must always be better to put someone before a court of law, if we can find the right means of doing so.
	The hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Harris) had something of the air of a braggart swaggering into a bar looking for a fight with anyone he could find. He was to be disappointed. Today, we are looking not for a fight, but for a reasoned argument regarding the way in which we should proceed. Most of those present in the Chamber are not prepared to throw away 1,000 years of British history and British jurisprudence simply to satisfy what might have been interpreted as prejudices on the hon. Gentleman's part. We seek a more reasoned way through the morass.
	What is in the proposals? My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester made a strong case that house arrest is not an acceptable option: it is simply imprisonment by another means. We believe, and I think that many people would agree, that for that to be imposed by ministerial fiat, without judicial oversight and without the safeguards that we normally build into the law, is a dangerous course. If we are to imprison people, let us say that we are doing so and let us have a judicial process that makes it appropriate for us to deprive them of their liberties, but let us not pretend that we are not doing that.
	I can understand why Labour Members bridled at the comparison with totalitarian countries that employ house arrestwe are not that sort of country, and neither should we ever be. But let us also recognise that, if we were to ask, say, the Government of Burma what their system was for house arrest and they replied, Of course, it is entirely done through judicial oversight, because although the decision is made by a Minister, it can be reviewed by a hand-picked panel of judges who will meet in secret and not tell the person involved what evidence is before them and what the charge is, we would raise our eyebrows. We would say that we were not convinced that that was an entirely democratic or judicial system.
	There are serious arguments against house arrest, but control orders are a different matter. I was disturbed when the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden appeared to take what was described as a black-and-white view and said that we should either lock people up or let them go. There must be gradations below that and safeguards that we can use to protect our citizenship. If we are to have control orders, they must be under judicial oversight. My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester made the point that we should formulate them in such a way as to ensure that they do not require derogation from the European convention on human rights, which is clearly possible in light of the experience of other countries. If they are to be reviewed, we must be clear what the terms of the review are. Whatever form of judicial system is used to review, will it look into matters of fact or simply matters of law? That is a critical question on which the Minister needs to respond. If it is essential, as the Minister says it is, for the Home Secretary himself to control the process of control orders and initiate them, is it still the Government's view that an order should extend to the family and friends of the person upon whom it is placed? Is that an essential element of the Government's package?
	By far the favourite option is that of prosecution, as the hon. and learned Member for Redcar said. We have had a series of debates about the use of intercept evidence and I still do not understand the arguments about the intrinsic difference between intercept evidence and electronic surveillance evidence, for example, and why one is admissible and the other is not. I am still not clear why such evidence cannot be used in some cases to ensure that somebody who should be prosecuted is prosecuted and imprisoned if they are found guilty. That extends well beyond terrorism to serious organised crime and other offences.
	If we believe that terrorists do not think that their phones are being tapped, we believe in a very different world to the one that I think we live in. Equally, if we need new offences, let us look at new offences. One of the problems is that we can prosecute for a conspiracy, but not for a conspiracy of one. If there is a lacuna in the law, let us fill it. Let us look at the suggestions from the Newton committee and do as the hon. and learned Member for Redcar saidpass the matter to the Director of Public Prosecutions and let him give an opinion as to what would make the prosecution that much simpler.
	We need to look at novel judicial methods as well. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden said that he was not attracted to European models, and we know why. Let him look at Scotland, a jurisdiction a little closer to home. I mischievously suggested that we extend the jurisdiction of Scotland to England and Wales in order to have something on which we could build a part-inquisitorial model. Let us have the proposals at the earliest opportunity. Ideally, let us have them before 13 March, so that we can discuss them. If that is not possible, let us at least make progress in that direction.
	I need no reminding about the dangers of terrorism: I was in Congress on Capitol hill in Washington DC on 11 September 2001 and saw the evidence of terrorist action with my own eyes. We face a serious threat, and the difficulty is finding an equilibrium between providing freedom from fear or worse for our citizens, which is every Government's duty, and freedom under law, which is what we are looking to the Government to provide.

Hazel Blears: With the leave of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall reply to the debate.
	I shall try to address as many of the issues raised by hon. Members as possible. The debate has ranged across a number of important, complex matters that go to the heart of our legal and constitutional framework. I am not sure that I can do all those issues justice in the 10 minutes allowed to me, but I shall do my very best.
	This afternoon's excellent debate has been filled with considered views and some challenging issues that go to the heart of how we organise ourselves in this country have been raised. We have had the benefit of the expertise of hon. Members whose knowledge is more extensive than mine. In particular, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) is a member of the Newton committee and the debate benefited enormously from his contribution.
	A number of my hon. Friends have made useful contributions. Given his robust approach, I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Harris) sits on the Government Benches. I have no doubt that I shall call on him to be my champion when I face a formidable array of Opposition Members. I am delighted that he felt able to make such a robust contribution.
	Several hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten), raised our move to obtain, where appropriate, memorandums of understanding with third countries on the deportation of some foreign nationals. We have made contact with several Governments and are now actively engaged in discussions. I am pleased to say that those discussions are going well, but more remains to be done. We want to secure an overarching memorandum of understanding with each country to allow us to make tailored agreements for individuals. Such agreements will not be legally binding, but those countries will enter into them. We cannot pre-test those agreementsI do not know how we could do sobut if we were about to deport somebody, they would have a right of appeal and the decision to deport under the memorandums of understanding would be subject to intense judicial scrutiny at that point.

Hazel Blears: Yes. That is exactly the kind of territory in which we are seeking proper assurances. The Government want to abide by our international obligations and we want reassurances on those points, which is why the discussions are so active.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart made some useful points about the different threat posed by international terrorism as compared with domestic terrorism, which we have faced in the past. He made three points. First, it is difficult to conduct political negotiations with people who want to destroy our way of life and values. Secondly, the terrorists whom we face are committed to mass civilian murders rather than small, targeted terrorist events. Thirdly, those terrorists are not averse to using suicide bombers. In the past, terrorists tried to maximise their chances of survival, but we now face mass civilian casualties and suicide bombing. The nature of the threat is significantly different from that which we have faced in the past.
	My hon. Friend asked whether the travel restrictions would apply to British citizens and foreign nationals. In respect of control orders, we will consider the appropriate conditions to meet the threat that faces us. Travel restrictions on foreign nationals and British citizens would be part of that consideration, because we do not want to discriminate against people inappropriately. We would consider whether the conditions were targeted at the threat that we face from those individuals.
	The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed rightly said that the threat will go on for a long time. That is why we need sustainable legislation in this field, rather than simply responding and reacting to every event as it occurs. Through the legislation that we are formulating, we are trying to come up with a framework that can be adapted to events. That is why we are saying that it should apply to all forms of terrorism that face usnot only international terrorism, but domestic terrorismand to British citizens as well as foreign nationals. In that way, we can tailor the control orders that we make in accordance with the threat.
	I am pleased that the right hon. Gentleman acknowledged that intercept is not the solution in every case. He was careful to try to confine it, and I am glad that he said that it is limited in its use. The costs and benefits of using intercept are a matter of judgment. We have taken our decision, but we will keep the matter under close review. I was pleased that the Newton report made a number of recommendations, which the Government looked at carefully in formulating current policy, and that it said that steps short of detention, such as tagging, curfews and restrictions on movement, could well be appropriate. I understand the right hon. Gentleman's party's difference with us on who should make the initial decision and I am sure that that will continue to be a matter of debate. Clearly, as he suggested, judges will have a view on whether they welcome taking on the decision making or on whether that might be appropriate for the Executive.
	On intercept, it might be useful for the House if I say that America does not have the same co-operation between intelligence and law enforcement agencies as there is in the UK. In fact, in some cases, the intelligence services in America are prohibited by statute from passing intelligence on to law enforcement. The unique, close relationship between the police and intelligence agencies in this country is not mirrored in America, and there is no evidence that America or other European countries can use intercept and get more convictions against terrorists than we can. The review considered that.
	My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston), in an excellent and thoughtful contribution, showed us not only his knowledge but his insight into and understanding of the issues. His analysis of the justification for action, our shared humanity and the need for balance and proportionality was excellent, and I am grateful for his measured and sincere support.
	The hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) made a typically thoughtful contribution. He said that he would trust Ministers, but not offer us a blank cheque. I entirely understand that he will want to scrutinise exactly what goes on. He raised the important issue of whether the control orders risk stimulating terrorism and further radicalisation. I am acutely conscious of that issue and one strand of our counter-terrorism strategy deals with prevention. That is not just about the harder measures, but working with the Muslim community in particular, and with young people, on solving some of the international issues that lead to radicalisation. It is important that we do that in conjunction with a range of other measures.
	My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) again rightly emphasised that prosecutions are our preferred route. She said that the Conservative Opposition would need a fall-back position. We have all been worried by the polarisation of the Conservatives, who said simply that we should either proceed through trial and prosecution or release with no controls. That is not a tenable position.
	We propose a spectrum of measures through the control orders to allow us to tailor the measures so that they are proportionate to the threat, thus meeting the concerns of the House of Lords about disproportionality. Simply having a system whereby we either lock people up through a conventional judicial trial or allow them to go completely free with no controls, will not meet the threat in the view of the people of this country. I am worried about that.
	My hon. and learned Friend gave an excellent explanation of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. We conduct investigations and we will refer matters to the Crown Prosecution Service, if that is the right thing to do.
	We have had an excellent debate. It is always our approach to prosecute when we can. We believe that the control orders are a proper response to the House of Lords. They are proportionate and not discriminatory.

Jonathan Sayeed: I accept that a complaint was brought because of ineffective internal controls in a company in which I had an interest and that as a Member of Parliament I was negligent in not checking the actions of that company. For that I apologise unreservedly to the House.
	To ensure that no such thing should happen again, I have relinquished my shares in the company and resigned as a consultant to it. As the Commissioner's report suggests, I never became involved in the company to make money; rather I agreed to help a friend with a small business start-up.
	It is a fact that I gave specific instructions to that company stating that nothing should be said or done by it that affected Parliament and furthermore that I was not permitted to use my membership of this House for personal gain. It is also a fact that my consultancy with the company was strictly limited in scope and did not include any element of company management or the vetting of promotional or other material including that on a company website in the United States.
	However, while I had no contractual responsibility in those areas, and was assured that my instructions were being followed, I should have recognised that as a Member of this House I needed to do more. I should have checked what was being done by the company in the United States. I did not do that, and that is why this complaint has occurred.
	In addition, I misclassified my constituency assistant. The misclassification did not attract additional allowances and had no effect on the public purse. There were late registrations in the Register of Members' Interests, and I accept that it is my responsibility to ensure that the register is accurate and kept up to date. However, I never sought to hide my involvement in the company. For both these errors, however, I apologise to the House
	I am pleased and relieved that after a five-month investigation the Standards and Privileges Committee has confirmed that
	there appears to be no basis for the newspaper assertions that The English Manner Ltd. charged substantial
	and, may I add, nor any other
	sums for arranging access to the House
	and that
	there is no evidence that Mr Sayeed received any direct benefit from any of the occasions on which he entertained in the House guests who had links with The English Manner .
	That refutes the main part of the complaint that has been made against me.
	I can assure the House that I have never used my access to the House or its facilities for direct or indirect commercial benefit and I have never solicited or received any payment for any tour or entertainment within the Palace of Westminster. I can also assure the House that the Palace of Westminster did not comprise any part of a programme offered to a guest or form any part of their expectation of their visit to the United Kingdom, nor did it constitute any part of a programme for which they paid.
	Some colleagues may not be aware that the findings of the Standards and Privileges Committee are not seen by the subject of the complaint until one hour before their publication. Consequently, there is no opportunity to correct errors of fact. The report contains a few errors of fact. Paragraph 12 is materially inaccurate, the concluding line of paragraph 13 is wrong, and in paragraph 14 it is clear that there has been a misunderstanding between the Committee and myself.
	Specifically, paragraph 11 states that the programme was circulated in advance to the group leader. That is wrong. The programme was not circulated in advance to anyone. As judgments appear to have been made as to whether I was an indirect beneficiary appear based upon these paragraphs, it is possible that the conclusions the Committee reached would have been different had I been able to correct those mistakes. The inability to correct errors of fact is a matter that the House might care to consider in the future. Whether or not that happens, I acknowledge that though I have acted in good faith throughout, a Committee of the House has found that I should have acted with greater care and that I may have risked damaging the reputation of the House. For that I apologise.
	Had The Sunday Times, which ran the story nearly six months ago, been interested in the truth rather than its preconceived agenda it would have reflected accurately what it was told and would have disclosed that material it said was on the company website had been removed because it was contrary to my instructions. If it had acted responsibly, it would have found that no one who visited the Commons ever came because of the website, it would have recognised that none of the guests of The English Manner were under the impression or perception that they were paying for, and receiving, privileged access to Parliament, and it would have ensured that it contacted those who knew the facts before publishing a tissue of lies.
	Whatever the deficiencies of The Sunday Times, I recognise that as a Member of Parliament I should have thought to do more to check what was happening in the United States than my contractual duties demanded. Although the specifics of the complaint have been shown to be false, had I been more vigilant the complaint may never have occurred.
	I was first elected to this place in 1983. I have never even contemplated the possibility that anything that I did or did not do would call into question either my loyalty to the House or my use of it. That my lack of care has caused questions to be asked and judgments to be made about my conduct I find deeply humiliating, and for which I tender my profound and unreserved apology to the House.

George Young: The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Sayeed) acknowledged at the beginning of his remarks to some extent that the conduct that gave rise to the complaint fell below the standards of the House, and I welcome that. He has sensibly drawn back from last Thursday's complete public rejection of our report and, again, I am grateful for that. The Committee on Standards and Privileges will need to reflect on whether he has responded fully to our recommendations that he apologise fully to the House in the light of some of his qualifications.
	I commend to the House the motion to approve my Committee's third report, which it agreed unanimously on 1 February, and its recommendation that the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire be suspended from the House for a period of two weeks. In supporting the motion, let me briefly remind the House of the background to our current regulatory regime. A decade or so ago, a series of incidents in which Members sought to exploit their position in the House for commercial advantage ended the careers of a number of colleagues and injured the reputation of others. More importantly, those incidents seriously damaged the standing of Members generally and of the House as an institution in the eyes of the public. Public confidence had to be rebuilt, and following recommendations by the Committee on Standards in Public Lifethen known as the Nolan committeethe House adopted much more rigorous procedures involving, first, a code of conduct and, secondly, an independent commissioner to investigate complaints. At the heart of the new arrangements was a recognition of the overriding need to maintain a proper and visible distinction between our public duties as Members and our private interests. That need is underpinned by the Register of Members' Interests, the main purpose of which is defined in the guide to the rules as giving
	public notification on a continuous basis of those pecuniary interests held by Members which might be thought to influence their parliamentary conduct or actions.
	I stress the words might be thought, as the House accepts that there are occasions on which perceptions are a relevant factor.
	As the code makes clear, Members must base their conduct on a consideration of the public interest, and avoid conflict between personal and public interests. They must also conduct themselves at all times in a manner that will tend to maintain and strengthen public trust and confidence in the integrity of Parliament as an institution, and never undertake any activity that would bring the House or Members generally into disrepute. Those two basic principles each have a bearing on the matter now before the House.
	Before turning to the specifics of that matter, it might be helpful if I outlined the key elements of how the system works in practice. All complaints are made to the independent commissioner and it is for him alone to decide which merit further investigation and how they are investigated. The ultimate purpose of any investigationhe is an investigator, not a prosecutoris to seek to establish whether or not the Member has breached the code of conduct. He seeks to agree with the Member concerned, wherever possibleand almost always doesthe facts that have emerged from the investigation. He forms an opinion as to whether they reveal any breach of the code and he reports to the Committee, which always publishes his report in full, along with its own report to the House.
	It is my Committee that reaches a decision on whether there has been a breach of the code and, in appropriate cases, recommends further action to the House. It reaches its decision on the basis of a thorough and critical examination of the facts reported by the commissioner and any further evidence that it has sought or that the Member has offered following confidential sight of the commissioner's full report. The Committee never simply rubber-stamps the commissioner's conclusions and recommendations.
	I turn now to the specific case before us today. I have to say to the House that I was surprised that the hon. Member issued an embargoed press statement within an hour of seeing the Committee's report, denouncing the Committee's recommendations that he be suspended for two weeks as
	wrong, unjust and contrary to the evidence accepted by the Commissioner and recognised by the Committee.
	The hon. Member is entitled to his opinion and he has at least been consistent in that matter, both in his written evidence and at the conclusion of his oral evidence when he made it clear that, in his view, it would be a gross travesty if the Committee upheld the complaint.
	The Committee, of course, gave full weight to the hon. Member's points, as it did to all the other evidence before it. It none the less unanimously agreed with the commissioner that the evidence bore out the substance of his conclusions. I hope that the House will understand that, in seeking to rebut some of the points that the hon. Member advanced, I may need to speak at greater length on this occasion than on previous ones where our verdict was not challenged.
	The hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Henderson) sought in his complaint an investigation of whether the hon. Member had abused parliamentary privilege in respect of his association with The English Manner Ltd.a company in which he has a 30 per cent. shareholding. The hon. Member for Harwich also asked for an examination of whether it was ethical for the hon. Member to employ Mrs. Alexandra Messervy as his constituency assistant when she was also the majority shareholder of The English Manner Ltd.a dual role that, in the view of the hon. Member for Harwich, may have resulted in an unacceptable conflict of interest.
	In support of his complaint, the hon. Member for Harwich sent the commissioner material gathered by The Sunday Times on the basis of which the newspaper had published articles in August 2004, asserting that The English Manner Ltd. charged substantial sums for tours of Parliament guided by the hon. Member in question.
	The complaint was thoroughly investigated by the commissioner, whose report is published together with the Committee's. On behalf of the House, I should like to thank the commissioner for the care with which he investigated the complaint and formulated his conclusions. Besides the commissioner's report, the Committee received further written submissions from the hon. Member and from Mrs. Messervy, who is also one of two directors of The English Manner Ltd. It also took oral evidence from the hon. Member, at his own request.
	Having given careful consideration to all the evidence before it, the Committee unanimously accepted the conclusions of the commissioner regarding the conduct of the hon. Member. For his part, and despite the protestations in his press release, the hon. Member himself accepted in giving evidence to the Committee that he did not exercise sufficient personal control over a company in which he had a financial interest.
	The basic facts are not in dispute. The hon. Member is a substantial shareholder in The English Manner Ltd.an interest that he properly registered from the outset. He is also a remunerated consultant to the company on marketing strategy. It is clear that he recognised the potential for conflicts of interest between those roles and his duties as a Member, both because of his oral instruction that neither his name, nor the name of Parliament was to be used in promotional material and because of his ticking of the relevant box when booking dining rooms in the House when his guests had English Manner Limited connections.
	It is also common ground between the Committee and the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire that there was no evidence that he benefited directly from entertaining clients of The English Manner Ltd. in the House, nor any evidence that the company made a profit from that entertaining. The Committee states that explicitly at paragraph 40 of the report, and also that there appears to be no basis for newspaper association that The English Manner charged substantial sums for arranging access to the House.
	Where, then, lies the root of the difference of view between the commissioner and the Committee, on the one hand, and the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire on the other? In essence, the hon. Member takes the view that, as there is no evidence supporting the key assertions by The Sunday Times regarding charging for access to Parliament, that complaint must fall. Likewise, he maintains that, as there was never, in his opinion, a conflict of interest between the role of Mrs. Messervy as his constituency assistant on the one hand, and her directorship and majority shareholding in The English Manner on the other, that complaint must also fall.
	On those grounds, the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire considers that the Committee should have explicitly rejected the entire complaint, and that therefore the imposition of a penalty is unjust and wrong, and that the opinions of both the commissioner and the Committee fly in the face of the evidence.
	I remind the House that the complaint, whose terms I outlined earlier, are set out in full on pages 40 and 41 of the Committee's report, and that they went far wider than the very narrow and specific points on which the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire seeks to argue. The commissioner and the Committee considered that a broader viewof how The English Manner promoted itself, and of the relationships between those running the companyneeded to be taken than the one apparently taken by the hon. Member. Given that the company sought, in large measure, to market itself by word of mouth and personal recommendation, that broader view should also apply to the likely reaction of those clients who were entertained at the House.
	The commissioner consistently presented the complaint to the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire in those broader terms, as did the Committee when it took evidence from him. In a nutshell, it is that different view of the scope of the complaint that lies at the heart of the different conclusions reached by the hon. Member on the one hand, and by the Committee and the commissioner on the other.
	The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire believes that the key question is, Was either I or The English Manner paid for taking people round the House? Both the Committee and the commissioner see the matter differently. They ask, Did the hon. Member break the code by allowing his privileged access to the House and its facilities to be exploited for the commercial benefit of a company in which he had a clear financial interest?
	Much of the evidence, and many of the press allegations, centred on material placed on the company's website. The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire does not dispute that some material on the website gave the impression that The English Manner could arrange privileged access to Parliament. However, he then contends that much of the material behind the complaint was posted on the website without proper authorisation, and that its removal by the company was recognition that it should not have been used in that way. That, of course, avoids the question about the purpose for which the company had prepared the materialsomething on which the hon. Member was silent.
	Such evidence as there is suggests that the documents concerned did form part of the company's marketing strategy. More seriously, however, the review of a visit that included the Palace of Westminster, to which the Committee referred in paragraph 19 of its report, and which explicitly connected the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire, Parliament and the expression fabulous English Manner adventure, was clearly written for promotional purposes by no less a person than the director of the company and a fellow shareholder. The hon. Member is also silent about how that happened. The evidence clearly suggested that the companyor, at least, its marketing endconsidered privileged access to Parliament to be a marketing point, whatever the protestations to the contrary.
	The first defence by the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire is that he had made it clear that neither his name, nor that of Parliament, should be used in the company's marketing. He argues that, having instructed that his name should not be used, why should he have had to check?
	Is that view sustainable? The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire is an experienced business man. As a Member of the House, he knew of the sensitivities and risks involved in being seen to market Parliament for commercial advantage, and he was remunerated as a marketing consultant to the company.
	Both the commissioner and the Committee agreed that the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire should have done more to avoid such conflict, and that he should have taken a far closer interest in the company's marketing strategy in that respect, including its use of the website as a promotional tool.
	The hon. Member's second defence was that, on all occasions except one, the guests he entertained in the House who were in the country as clients of The English Manner were entertained as personal friends and not company clients. We explored that in evidence with him, and he agreed that in fact on each occasion only at least one of the guests was a good friend. In essence, the hon. Member was entertaining groups on the basis of know one, know all. While he may have known personally the organiser of the Garden Club visit, there is no evidence that he had any personal connection whatever with the club as an institution. He also accepted that there was no discussion with guests that might help them to appreciate what he saw as the distinctive status of their visits to the House. Several of them also got a bill for the meal from the companyan act unlikely to reinforce any perception that they had been personally entertained by the hon. Memberalthough we recognise that there is no evidence that the company added a mark-up.
	The most blatant example of commercial exploitation was the familiarisation visit, which, as a whole, was self-evidently designed to promote the company. Neither the commissioner nor the Committee found sustainable the hon. Member's arguments that that entertainment in the House was purely a personal matter. Both concluded that, taken as a whole, the effect of those visits was to give credibility to the company's overall marketing claim that it could gain access for its clients to institutions, people and places that would otherwise be difficult. The hon. Member, as a major shareholder, would therefore stand to benefit indirectly from that promotion of the company.
	Nor does the hon. Member's assertion, repeated in his press statement, that a visit to the House did not form any part of a programme offered to the guests hold water. The Committee saw the programme for the Garden Club visit. It clearly included a visit to the House, and must have been made available beforehand to some, at least, of the party, as it included an option that had to be booked six weeks before the date of the visit. The hon. Member, in his evidence, could give no satisfactory explanation of that. In short, both the commissioner and the Committee rejected both defences, and concluded that he had failed adequately to prevent The English Manner from exploiting commercially his privileged access to the House.
	Two other matters came to light during the commissioner's investigation. The first, which emerged very late in the investigation, was that the hon. Member had made six, not four, registrable visits to the USA paid for by The English Manner. The hon. Member had previously twice assured the commissioner that there had been only four such visits. It is regrettable that he misled the commissioner in that way.
	The hon. Member accepted responsibility for the late registrations, and explained that they had arisen as a result of a staff member's oversight. The Committee noted, though, that the two previous visits, recorded in the current published edition of the register, had also not been registered within the one-month period, again by substantial margins.
	The hon. Member had also on four occasions given incorrect information to the Department of Finance and Administration about Mrs. Messervy's employment status. The information was apparently given in good faith at the time, but should have been corrected when anticipated developments did not materialise. Those failures could have led to an overpayment of the staffing allowance, but in the event appear not to have done so. Although, in that sense, no harm was done, those lapses suggest a less than thorough approach to those important matters.
	In both respects, the Committee considered that the hon. Member could, and should have done more. He has apologised for his oversights in respect of the staffing allowance and accepts that ultimately he is to blame for the failure to register, in a timely fashion, the two past recent visits.
	The Committee has given very careful consideration to the Commissioner's report, and to the further evidence provided by the hon. Member and by Mrs. Messervy. It has discussed the case on three occasions, and deliberated on it for several hours. I stress that the Committee was unanimous in its conclusions. I believe that the hon. Member takes too narrow and selective a view of the nature of the complaint and appears unable to recognise the breadth of the issues raised by his conduct. I take the view that the Committee's recommendation, in the formulation of which it took into account recommendations made in previous cases, is a proportionate response to the facts revealed in the evidence. I see nothing in the hon. Member's press release that leads me to think that either the commissioner or the Committee came to the wrong decision.
	Looking at decisions in past cases involving failure to observe strictly the registration requirements, it is likely that the non-registration of the visits and the incorrect information given to the Department of Finance and Administration, both of which the hon. Member accepts, would themselves have led the Committee to call for an apology. When we add in the other matters, which risked damaging the reputation of the House by giving the impression that its facilities were for hire, I think that a recommendation for suspension was inevitable given the extent to which the hon. Member's conduct, as revealed by the commissioner's investigation, had fallen below the standard the House expects.
	I commend the report to the House and the recommendation it makes that the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire be suspended from the House for a period of two weeks.

Oliver Heald: These are always unhappy occasions, but it is important that the House can operate proper and effective self-regulation. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) for his chairmanship of the Committee. I also thank the commissioner and the other members of the Committee who work so hard on these difficult cases on behalf of all of us.
	It is clear from the report and exhibits that the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Sayeed) has conceded that he did not exercise sufficient control over the company he part owned and that those using the company website had scope to believe that the company was in the business of providing access to the House of Commons. There was an appearance of conflict of interest in his staff employment arrangements. He has had to apologise for giving the Fees Office and the commissioner wrong information.
	The Committee found that the hon. Member stood to gain financially from the benefits to the company of his involvement in visits to and entertainment at the House. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire said, the Committee concluded that the hon. Member's conduct was well below the standards expected. Hon. Members will know that my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition has described that behaviour as wholly unacceptable. I support the Committee's recommendation and the motion before the House.

David Kidney: It is a delight I hope that the Minister agreesto debate British trees. After all, they have been providing us humans with food, fuel, shelter, building materials, places of recreation and beauty in our landscape for millennia. Indeed, our quality of life is enhanced by the existence of trees, which absorb greenhouses gases that otherwise cause harm to us and our environment. Trees give us shade. They block out noise. They conserve biodiversity, as habitats for numerous animal and plant species. They aid the economytimber and tourism, with visits to see trees, most immediately come to mindand in my view, they make us happier.
	Hon. Members can see a glorious row of trees close to the House in New Palace Yard. They can see an ancient hawthorn and a rare black poplar in Green park, and they can see the famous Elfin oak in a gilded cage in Kensington gardens. My constituency contains examples of the brilliance of treesI am sure that those of many hon. Members are the sameand many contexts in which trees are valuable to our history. The Royal Oak public house is in Bishop's woods in my constituency. Many pubs in the country have that name, but the one in my constituency is within a mile or two of the very oak where it is alleged that Charles II hid after his disastrous defeat at Worcester.
	Trees are valuable to our heritage. My constituency contains parts of the wonderful Cannock Chase, which was once a great royal hunting forest but is today owned by the county council. It is a mass of sites of special scientific interest, an area of outstanding natural beauty and a special area of conservation for its heathland. Trees are valuable to our habitats. What a delight it was for me the day that I stood in Shugborough estate, viewing a lime tree that was home to enormous numbers of wasps. I assure the Minister that I watched from a safe distance. Trees are also valuable to housingsomething that applies across the country. I refer in particular to urban areas: trees add to the delight of parks, grass verges alongside roads and housing estates.
	I want to discuss the polices that we should implement to value and protect all kinds of trees and about the contribution that my hon. Friend the Minister can make in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Let me start with the brilliant reforms that we have had to the common agricultural policy since June 2003. It is great to see that woodland and trees are recognised for the part that they play in farmed landscapes. We have a glorious toolkit: the cross-compliance conditions, the entry level and the high-level schemes for the forest stewardship and woodland grant schemes. For goodness' sake, let us ensure that we use all those schemes to improve the country's trees; for example, by buffering important woodland sites from surrounding intensive land use.
	The Department has other tools, such as its biodiversity strategy, which covers the conditions that are set to maintain the condition of SSSIs and the number of agri-environment schemes to manage land. Another of the Department's tools is the plant diversity challenge, otherwise known as the UK's response to the global strategy for plant conservation. The target on the sustainable management of plant products is relevant to that.
	Training, skills and information services are a crucial tool for the Department. I believe that it is possible to fire the public's imagination and inspire people to work, including as volunteers, with trees. From my constituency experiences, I know that there would be a positive public response. When residents living near the ancient Fullmoor wood thought that it was under threat from works proposed by the Forestry Commission, they organised a huge campaign, which included public demonstrations and contact with their Member of Parliament. I praise publicly the response of the Forestry Commission because, through its openness and transparency, it resolved problems and soothed anxieties. It now has a positive partnership with the residents.
	I shall cite a further positive example from my constituency. In the run-up to the millennium, all the residents of the village of Derrington got together to plant a millennium wood, which now stands as a fine tribute for centuries to come. It was a delight for me to join the residents one day in planting those trees, which they now tend to attentively.
	The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister can make a contribution to all trees. I know that that is not my hon. Friend the Minister's Department, but I am sure that he can assist me. The current system of tree preservation orders is inadequate. There are explicit exceptions to their power. Trees that are dead, dying or dangerous are not protected. The removal of a tree can be authorised by an Act of ParliamentI suppose that the measures on high hedges in the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 would provide for that. An existing tree preservation order can be overridden by granting new planning permission for development. On top of all that, there is the obvious exception that a council may give permission to lop a protected tree, or even to cut it down.
	In addition to those exceptions, there are obvious weaknesses and loopholes in the system. For example, only a fine can be imposed for breaking a tree preservation order and destroying a valuable tree. During my time as a councillor in Stafford, I knew of a developer who deliberately cut down protected trees and stood the fine because the profit on the houses that he subsequently built was miles greater than the fines.

David Kidney: My hon. Friend is right, and I trust that he works hard to do his best to overcome such problems.
	That takes me on to the second aspect of the weaknesses and loopholes in the system. Local authorities do not always enforce existing tree preservation orders. There can be a conundrum about whether accidental damage was caused during development, but local authorities often face other problems. I know from my casework of an allegation that a developer deliberately knocked down trees that were subject to tree preservation orders so that he could make way for houses.
	There is a reverse side of the coin when considering tree preservation orders. Let us be fair to the owners of trees that are subject to such orders. I know from my casework about article 5 certificates, which allow local authorities to refuse permission to carry out work on trees, even for safety reasons. An article 5 certificate can be issued on a tree that is subject to an order made before 1999. The certificate absolves them from any responsibility for anything that goes wrong afterwards. That is clearly unfair. I note from my correspondence with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister that the Government have a long-standing policy of ending that unfairness. I therefore ask the Minister, when will we end that injustice? While we wait to end it, can we not give local authorities guidance requiring them not to rely on article 5 certificates?
	I also ask the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to help local authorities rebuild their expertise in dealing with trees. Several local authorities have lost their ability to employ tree officers, because of previous financial restrictions, and although elected representatives are very willing to do more to help on the subject, they often lack the experience and expertise in officer support to do so.
	I want to say something about ancient trees and ancient woodland in particular. It is estimated that the total area of ancient woodland in England is 334,000 hectares. Woodlands have some protection; felling licences are a good example, and there are designations such as SSSIs and special areas of conservation. I like to think that the UK has a special responsibility to look after ancient trees based on the fact that about 80 per cent. of north Europe's ancient trees are in Britain.
	Obviously, tree preservation orders do not protect ancient trees. I say obviously because one of the exceptions to the order is that the tree is dead, dying or dangerous. Of course lots of ancient trees are dead or dying. There is an anonymous saying that an oak tree grows for 300 years, rests for 300 years and spends 300 years gracefully declining. The very fact that they are elderly and declining requires us to protect them.
	I alert the Minister to the sometimes outrageous outcome of calling an old tree dangerous. I should like to give an example with a happy ending. The Redmire oak of North Yorkshire is said to be more than 500 years old. The Methodist preacher John Wesley was said to have preached under it in the 18th century. Despite the support of the parish council, there were increasing health and safety concerns about the tree. Although it is protected by a tree preservation order, the district council thought that it was helpless to save it because it was nearly dead. Yet, with a grant of just 200 from Yorkshire Water, the tree was protected and able to stand and continue to live. It is outrageous that an ancient tree could be lost for want of 200-worth of investment just because we do not have a robust system of protection. I suggest that the tree preservation order, which presently effectively excludes such trees, ought to be changed so that it explicitly protects themperhaps with the new designation of an historic tree.
	Although I was quick to praise the common agricultural policy reforms, I fear that in the case of ancient trees the CAP slightly misses the target. There is a welcome recognition of the value of ancient trees in the good agricultural environmental conditionGAECbut, as I understand it, that covers felling licences, which relate to woodlands, and tree preservation orders. As I have just explained, tree preservation orders are not helpful to ancient trees. Will the Minister consider whether more needs to be done to ensure that ancient trees are covered by the CAP policy reforms that we have achieved. I accept that it is incredibly important to encourage the planting today of trees that will become the ancient trees of future generations. That is an important area of attention for the money from CAP reforms.
	On the issue of planning law and protection for ancient trees, I refer briefly to what is to become planning policy statement 9. We currently have planning policy guidance note 9 on nature conservation, but that is soon to be PPS9 and entitled Biodiversity and geological conservation.
	Paragraph 10 represents a great step forward for ancient trees. It states:
	Aged or veteran trees found outside ancient woodland are also particularly valuable for biodiversity. Planning authorities should encourage the conservation of such trees as part of development proposals.
	That is excellent. Paragraph 10 continues:
	Ancient woodland is a valuable biodiversity resource both for the diversity of species and for its longevity as woodland. Once lost it cannot be recreated. Local planning authorities should identify any areas of ancient woodland in their areas that do not have statutory protection (e.g. as an SSSI).
	All of that marks a welcome shift in policy, but it ends with a caveat to its requirements
	unless the need for, and benefits of, the development in that location outweigh the loss of the woodland habitat.
	Does the Minister accept that there is no need for that caveat? After all, the planning system requires planners to take all material considerations into account when dealing with an application. The point of the paragraph is to protect ancient woods and trees. I hope that my hon. Friend agrees that the caveat should be lost from the final text of PPS9.
	At last week's meeting of the all-party group on conservation and wildlife, which I have the privilege to chair, we received a joint presentation from the Woodland Trust and the Ancient Tree Forum, in which there was strong interest from Members of both Houses. They showed us two new website projects. The first, at www.ancient-tree-hunt.org.uk, involves mapping all the ancient trees in the country. The second, at www.woodsunderthreat.info, is excellent: not only does it show any interested member of the public where there are trees and woods under threat from harmful development, but local residents concerned about their ancient trees can mail in information about trees under threat, which can be added to the project. I ask my hon. Friend whether there is any chance of DEFRA joining friends such as the Forestry Commission in funding the projects, which I believe contribute toward meeting the biodiversity strategy indicators and the plant diversity challenge targets by which his Department abides.
	At last week's meeting, I was delighted to be able to introduce as one of our speakers the world-famous author Bill Brysonthe Minister will know of his great commitment to Britain and Britain's heritage. He described ancient trees and woods as important markers of our cultural heritage and spoke of the scandalous loss of ancient trees and woodland. He also made a comparison with historic buildings, saying that while there is protection for historic buildings, there is certainly no protection for historic trees. I urge the Minister to take action to protect our trees for today's and future generations in the same way as we protect our historic buildings. I believe that that would be an extremely popular cause and that a Minister and a Government who took such positive action would be widely acclaimed.

Ben Bradshaw: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) on securing a debate on an extremely important subject and on delivering with such passion a speech full of information. It was well worth waiting through the little bit of business of the House to respond to it.
	I share my hon. Friend's passion for trees. I spent some of the happiest times of my childhood up trees, and I remain something of a tree hugger. I continue to admire trees, and I strongly endorse everything he said about the contribution that they make to our landscape, our biodiversity and our psychological health, and simply as objects of enormous beauty. This evening, we are thinking particularly of ancient and veteran trees, which provide an extremely important genetic link to the wild wood that covered much of our countryside centuries ago. He acknowledged how fortunate we in this country are by citing a statistic that I was unable to lay my hands onthat 80 per cent. of Europe's ancient woodland is in the UK. That has come about partly for cultural reasons and partly because, by and large, we have done a good job of protecting our wonderful trees.
	We have also done quite a lot to encourage new woodland creation through the Forestry Commission's woodland grant scheme and projects such as the national forest and the community forest. Contrary to popular perception, the area of woodland in this country is growing fairly significantly every year. Nevertheless, we must recognise that, whenever trees and woodlands are perceived to be under threat, the adequacy of their protection comes into question.
	We have in place a wide range of measures to protect our trees. As my hon. Friend mentioned, they include tree preservation orders, which give local authorities wide powers to protect trees and woodlands in the interests of amenity. Work on those trees then requires the consent of the planning authority. I agree with him that the exemptions that he highlighted in the current system, which allow work on dead, dying or dangerous trees, should be tightened up, and not only in relation to veteran trees. I understand that, as he was kind enough to point out, a lot of the responsibility in this area lies with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, with which we work closely. It has responsibility for tree preservation orders.

Ben Bradshaw: Exactly: it is a good example not of cutting trees but of cross-cutting government. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is planning to address the issue as soon as parliamentary time permits. From the point of view of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, we will certainly continue to press it to do so.
	The removal of the exemption allowing work on dying trees would in particular boost the protection of veteran trees, which, as my hon. Friend also pointed out, often contain a significant proportion of dead wood, as they take a long time to die. He also mentioned the felling regulations, which require permission to be sought from the Forestry Commission when a landowner wishes to fell an area of woodland. These applications are carefully considered before a licence is granted. Restocking conditions can be attached to such licences, and in many cases, the new woodland that is established is an improvement in quality terms on that which it replaces.
	As the House will be aware, many of our finest concentrations of veteran trees and ancient woodlands have extra statutory protection through designation as sites of special scientific interest. I am thinking, for example, of the New forest, Sherwood forest and the trees of Windsor great park. More than a quarter of England's 4,000-plus SSSIs, making up more than 115,000 hectares, have significant woodland conservation interest. Almost three quarters of woodland SSSIs are in favourable condition, which is ahead of the average for all SSSIs. Some of the woodland SSSIs are also special areas of conservation under the habitats directive, which recognises their importance at European level.
	Protection and enhancement of veteran trees and ancient woodland is, however, about much more than regulation and statutory designations. It is also about raising awarenesssomething that is partly helped by debates such as thisof the value of our trees and woodlands among all who can influence their management. That is why projects such as the one to which my hon. Friend referred, the Ancient Tree Forum's ancient tree hunt, is partly funded by the Forestry Commission, which is a member of the DEFRA family, as well as the work of the Woodland Trust to draw attention to the special value of veteran trees and ancient woodland, are to be applauded.
	For our part, in 2002 we published the England biodiversity strategy, Working with the grain of nature, which set out a programme of activity to ensure the integration of biodiversity into policy making and practice. One of the key aims in the strategy is to conserve and enhance the biodiversity of woodlands, and particularly ancient semi-natural woodlands, veteran trees and wood pasture. The woodlands and forestry workstream, which helped to prepare the strategy, is currently undertaking a detailed work plan to tackle important issues such as the protection of woodland from external threats, which my hon. Friend mentioned; conserving and enhancing the biodiversity of native woodland; and the conservation of woodland biodiversity in the wider landscape.
	I turn now to one or two of the issues that my hon. Friend raised that are the specific responsibility of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The new draft guidance in the planning policy statement for biodiversity, PPS9, which he mentioned, makes a big step forward in recognising the biodiversity value of ancient woodland. The draft PPS now requires local authorities to identify ancient woodland of highest biodiversity value that is not already protected by statutory designation. We believe that that identification process will assist local authorities in ensuring that the biodiversity value of such sites is fully considered in decisions on planning proposals. It will also ensure that development affecting ancient woodland is not allowed to go ahead unless any loss or deterioration is clearly outweighed by the need for and benefits of the proposed development.
	I give my hon. Friend the assurance that we will not make any decision on the final wording of PPS9 until all responses to the consultation, including from the Woodland Trust and the Ancient Tree Forum, have been fully considered. We expect to publish a final version of PPS9, together with its accompanying circular and a good practice guide, in mid2005.
	For many years, the Forestry Commission has recognised the value of our ancient woodlands, and it is preparing a new statement on ancient woodland policy. The new statement will confirm our commitment to the protection and enhancement of ancient woodlands and will be backed by new management guidelines for ancient and native woodlands that gives practical advice to woodland managers. The new English woodland grants scheme will provide a framework for the provision of incentives to encourage the management of ancient woodland and the creation of new woodland.
	My hon. Friend referred to another way in which we are encouraging the management of individual and small groups of trees. DEFRA's new high-level scheme is one of our agri-environment schemes under common agricultural policy reform. It will provide incentives for various works to conserve and manage veteran trees, including pollarding, surgery and protection from encroachment. Although I appreciate my hon. Friend's concerns about designation, because we have such a large proportion of Europe's ancient and veteran treesfar more than any other countryour overall approach is concentrated on some of the very good schemes, rather than the labour and resource-intensive process of cataloguing every single veteran tree in the country. That policy is under constant review and I have heard his representations tonight. For the time being, however, our overall approach to building on our wonderful resource of ancient woodland and veteran trees is best done by building on the existing work, including tree preservation orders, planning policy statements, ancient woodland policy, agri-environmental schemes and woodland grants.

Ben Bradshaw: My hon. Friend has made a good pointI was going to respond to his earlier point about a particular constituency case. It is extremely important that local authorities take their responsibilities on preserving ancient and important trees seriously. I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford about the need for local authorities to re-examine how they resource such work, and I undertake to ensure that the ODPM is aware of the concerns expressed today about how local authorities prioritise such work and the action that they take when developers behave unacceptably.